being human Summer 2014

“Morally Awake” – the Art of Larry Young (p.31)

(p.36, 55)

Became a Riddle...” by Jon McAlice (p.40)

Eugenics, by Andrew Linnell (p.28)

“Sophia” by Larry Young

Bringing Anthroposophy to Life!

October 10 - 12 at Rudolf Steiner College

In the arts, education, health, special needs, healing for the earth and many other ways, anthroposophy reaches out to engage people with intimacy, practicality and inspiration. As a community of striving individuals, can we manifest these healing qualities in order to touch people’s everyday experience of life? Can we help one another find our way in anthroposophy, to awaken to the wonder of the underlying patterns and dimensions of this human lifetime, this human journey, to nourish the sense of meaning and purpose of every individual biography?

At the same time, in the biography of anthroposophy, can we recognize and begin to release the protective gestures that were called forth around it by the trials of the twentieth century? Like the awakening of Briar Rose, can anthroposophy step forth again as young, inspiring and hopeful as it was a century ago – now when human beings are moving with too little insight toward the profoundest choices concerning our future development?

Visit anthroposophy.org or call 734.662.9355 for more details and to register.

Artwork by Audrie Brown, student of Free Columbia Painting School

Rudolf Steiner, Life and Work Volume 1 (1861–1890): Childhood, Youth, and Study Years

Peter Selg, Translated by Margot Saar

This is the first of seven comprehensive volumes on Rudolf Steiner’s “being, intentions, and journey.” It presents Rudolf Steiner from childhood and youth through his doctorate degree and up to the time of his work for the Goethe Archives as editor of Goethe’s scientific writings. By considering his formative years in depth, we come to understand better the roots and development of Rudolf Steiner’s later spiritual research and teachings.

978-1-62148-082-2 | 320 pages | paperback | Illustrated | $35.00

An Electronic Silent Spring Facing the Dangers and Creating Safe Limits

Katie Singer

Over millions of years, living creatures have evolved in relation to the Earth’s electromagnetic energy. Now, we’re surrounded by human-made frequencies that challenge our health and survival. An Electronic Silent Spring reports the effects of electrification and wireless devices on people, plants, bee colonies, and frogs around the globe. It presents solutions for people who want to reduce their exposure to electromagnetic radiation. This pioneering book is for anyone concerned about the health of the environment and the people and other creatures that inhabit it.

978-1-938685-08-8 | 288 pages | paperback | $18.00

“Steiner and Me” by Larry Young. See the gallery, page 31.

The Anthroposophical Society in America

General Council Members

Torin Finser (General Secretary)

Virginia McWilliam (at large)

Carla Beebe Comey (at large)

John Michael (at large, Treasurer)

Regional Council Representatives

Linda Evans (Eastern Region)

Dennis Dietzel (Central Region)

Joan Treadaway (Western Region)

Marian León, Director of Administration & Member Services

Deb Abrahams-Dematte, Director of Development

being human is published four times a year by the Anthroposophical Society in America 1923 Geddes Avenue

Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1797

Tel. 734.662.9355

Fax 734.662.1727

www.anthroposophy.org

Editor: John H. Beck

Associate Editors:

Fred Dennehy, Elaine Upton

Design and layout: John Beck, Ella

Lapointe, Seiko Semones (S2 Design)

Please send submissions, questions, and comments to: editor@anthroposophy.org or to the postal address above, for our Fall 2014 issue by 9/10/2014.

©2014 The Anthroposophical Society in America. Responsibility for the content of articles is the authors’.

from the editors

This issue brings one new feature we have been hoping for: a Gallery in the arts & ideas section. American-born Larry Young, living in recent years in Ontario, Canada, with his artist and teacher wife Kathie, is both a wonderful visual artist working in many media, and a thoughtful student of anthroposophy and of human being and becoming who is constantly sharing his researches and reflections in works of art. The Gallery starts on page 31, but other of Larry’s creations are scattered throughout the issue—and on the cover with “Sophia”! On Facebook or Flickr there are quotations, observations, and original verses with most of Larry’s pieces. Accompanying this image “Sophia” are these lines by the artist:

Warm feelings, stilled thoughts receive love-wisdom.

Lips stay silent that know the power of the Word.

We are grateful to Larry for his help and generosity in sharing this beautiful, thought-filled work.

Quite accidentally there are many intersections and cross-reflections in this issue. The passing of Paul Scharff, founder of the Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Community, touches notes that are sounded in other pieces. The theme of learning that comes out of working is a part of the “Camphill Academy” idea that begins our initiative! section. The page 14 thoughts on the Threefold Auditorium wisely echo Paul’s insight that planning should involve listening to what those around you are asking and hoping for. The group of short reports about anthroposophic medicine’s growth and outreach builds in part on long-time labors of Dr. Scharff and his colleagues in the healing arts. The wisdom of seeing (already in the 1950s) the challenge of so many older people coming, while care was being planned out mechanically, finds a dramatic new challenge in Andrew Linnell’s “21st Century Eugenics.” And of course the work of the Fellowship Community, its whole way of coming about and being, is of a piece with Rudolf Steiner’s explanation on page 61 of how the group life in the Anthroposophical Society is meant to anticipate and struggle toward a renewed and vastly deepened sociability and freedom that he could hear calling to us from a thousand and more years in the future.

So we are grateful for the opportunity to consider Paul Scharff’s life at this moment, to Ann Scharff, Kathleen Wright, Harold Bush, and Claus Sproll for their remembrances of him, and very much to Michael Ronall for remembering and offering his 2006 interview with Dr. Scharff for The Listener which let’s us hear once more a remarkable voice.

John Beck

HOW TO receive being human, contribute

Copies of being human are free to members of the Anthroposophical Society in America (visit anthroposophy.org/membership.html or call 734.662.9355). Sample copies are also sent to friends who contact us at the address below. To contribute articles or art please email editor@anthroposophy.org or write Editor, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.

This issue reviews two books that examine the subject of consciousness from points of view that reject the mainstream neural reductionist assumption that consciousness is the product of the brain.

The first, Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology of the 21st Century, by Edward F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson, a team of scientific scholars, puts forward an alternative model of the relationship of consciousness to brain, one largely derived from the work of F.W.H. Myers and William James more than a century ago. It is a model that restores conscious mental life to its “proper place” at the center of science.

The second is Beyond Religion: The Cultural Evolution of the Sense of the Sacred From Shamanism to Religion to Post-Religious Spirituality by William Irwin Thompson. Thompson’s particular focus is the evolution of consciousness, particularly the transition from what he terms the mental/rational stage of consciousness to the integral stage of consciousness now taking place. As Irreducible Mind relies heavily on William James and F.W.H. Myers, Beyond Religion relies on the consciousness evolution system of Jean Gebser in his daunting treatise The Ever Present Origin

Both books—particularly in their rejection of the materialist reductionist orthodoxies about consciousness that are so prevalent now—are to some degree consistent with the anthroposophical point of view. Neither, however, invokes Rudolf Steiner in support of its thesis; Irreducible Mind because its authors seem unfamiliar with Steiner, and Thompson (who knows and admires Steiner) because he prefers Gebser’s model. It is somewhat disheartening to see a serious contemporary work in the field of consciousness that fails to avail itself of the immense insight and erudition of Steiner, but, on the other hand, exciting to see anthroposophical points of view supported from different, but thoroughly considered, points of view.

The Annual Members’ Meeting

of the Anthroposophical Society in America will be held on Sunday, October 12, 2014 at Stegmann Hall, Rudolf Steiner College, 9200 Fair Oaks Blvd, Fair Oaks, CA. The meeting will begin at 10:30am and conclude at 1:00pm.

Members are invited to submit proposals to be considered for the meeting. Items for consideration may be addressed to the General Council and must be submitted in writing and sent via first-class mail postmarked by August 12, 2014 at the latest. Send your request to the Society office at 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104. Thank you.

Frederick Dennehy

being human digest

This digest offers brief notes, news, and ideas from a range of holistic and human-centered initiatives. E-mail suggestions to editor@anthroposophy. org or write to “Editor, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104.”

WALDORF EDUCATION

“Why I Became a Waldorf Teacher”

If you can spare two minutes and forty-four seconds at your internet machine, mouse or touch your way over to the AWSNA site “WhyWaldorfWorks.org” and scroll down a bit until you see a video by this name. Click the little four-arrows to make it full screen. “I am a Waldorf teacher to lead an artistic life.” “I really wanted a job that never made me feel like I had to go to work.” “Because of the educational philosophy...” “Where else could you work where you could actually talk about things like the child’s soul life?” “Because I believe that a child has a whole spirit and I want to be able to awaken that spirit.” “To give them the chance to learn from the inside out...” “I’m also learning about myself and how to be better in relationships... I love the challenge of being a Waldorf teacher.”

Link: whywaldorfworks.org

The Imagine! Campaign

The Alliance for Public Waldorf Education had a strong turnout for its annual meeting last January at Rudolf Steiner College, with the theme “The Social Mission of Public Waldorf Schools and Communities.” This “public” Waldorf impulse has been strong in the West, and the Alliance has helped it take shape with a four-part mission: “Promote and support the development of high quality public Waldorf education. Strengthen the community of public schools inspired by Waldorf education. Increase the visibility of Waldorf Education in the greater educational landscape. Make Waldorf education accessible for all.”

Coming off the conference, and with the number of “public Waldorf” schools passing fifty, the Alliance board of directors voted to launch a campaign to fund a year of organizational development with a full-time executive director. Certainly the great work that AWSNA has been doing for independent Waldorf schools is an inspiration, but there are unique challenges within the governmentfunded education world. Interim Executive Director Will Stapp writes in the latest Alliance newsletter, “The work of growing an individual school is so encompassing that it’s not always easy to find the time to ponder the larger picture of our movement; nevertheless, our larger chal-

lenges require a collective response and a wise sharing of resources if we are to grow and evolve the movement in a healthy way that fosters innovation while remaining true to Steiner’s educational impulse. Hence the need to invest in leadership that can help not only to respond to current movementwide needs and trends, but also help anticipate and coalesce around future directions and challenges.”

Link: www.allianceforpublicwaldorfeducation.org

FARMING – ENVIRONMENT

People, Places, Ideas, Fruits of Nature

We met Michael Judge for the first time when he presented his fascinating work, comparing Rudolf Steiner’s descriptions of evolution with those of archaeology and geology, at the Threefold “Living Questions” Research Symposium a few Septembers ago. Then there were monthly emails coming from Michael about a “Chesapeake BioDynamic Network of Virginia, Maryland, District of Columbia, West Virginia, and Delaware.” And this summer we saw an event at anthroposophy.org for “the Carver Research Institute” with Michael and Patrick Kennedy. Good ideas!

First the network. Last September’s announcement said “Anyone working in, interested, or thinking about biodynamic gardening/agriculture is warmly welcomed. We gather once a month on the first Saturday of the month... Anyone can bring hopes, ideas, reports, and concerns for Biodynamic Agriculture. Moreover. we shall look over Chapters 7 of Rudolf Steiner’s Agricultural Course. Pre-meeting activity 8–10am: We shall stir BD prep #500 horn manure and apply. White Rose Farm (Sally Voris) plans to send biodynamic produce at 12:00 noon for your purchase and nutrition.”

We like the Anthroposophical Society Central Region’s idea of identifying geographically with the huge central heart-shaped tributary system of the Mississippi River. The Chesapeake Bay is another prominent, living, dynamic feature of North America. Perhaps there’s something for people to come together around in your “neck of the woods”? Or connect with Michael (below) if you’re near the Chesapeake.

Real people. Living places. Good ideas and ideals. And the fruits of nature. A simple but potent combination. Which brings us to George Washington Carver, whose name resonates from years of Black History Months and whose work and character, once we learn more about him,

seem highly appropriate for a “research institute for the practice of anthroposophical spiritual science.” A contemporary of Rudolf Steiner, Carver (1864-1943) was born into slavery and became famous for his research and promotion of crops alternative to cotton, to support a better life especially for poor farmers. Shortly before his death Time magazine compared him to Leonardo da Vinci. And the quotation from Carver that graces this new small institute’s web page is intimate and profound:

“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also—if you love them enough.”

Contact/Link:

Michael Judge: mjudge2000@gmail.com

George Washington Carver Institute: cckennedy2006.wix.com/gwcresearchinstitute

THE ARTS

Art Section Newsletter and Site

Rudolf Steiner’s School for Spiritual Science is based at the Goetheanum in Switzerland, but there is also a North American Collegium and Section representatives. The (Visual) Art Section in North America has a valuable website which includes postings of its newsletter, a major effort of high quality produced by David Adams.

The latest Art Section newsletter, Spring-Summer 2014, is now online with features like

A Conversation with Patrick Stolfo

Reflections of the “Die & Blossom” Conference

Toward the Transformation of Lucifer

David Austin’s Impressive Swinhay House

“Living Balance – From the ‘I’” Sculpture Exhibition

Hungarian Pavilion Design by Mozes Foris

If these are unfamiliar names and concerns, go take a look. Many images of Patrick Stolfo’s sculpture. The new leader of the Art Section at the Goetheanum. A fine photo of Joseph Beuys “Honey Pump in the Workplace”—that alone makes our day! 1918 paintings of the four elements. And very much more. It’s a visual feast. Congratulations to David Adams and all contributers.

Link:

http://northamericanartsection.blogspot.com/

The New York Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America

138 West 15th Street, NY, NY 10011 — (212) 242- 8945

“The most impressive holistic legacy of the 20th century...”

—NY Open Center co-founder Ralph White on Rudolf Steiner

RUDOLF STEINER BOOKSTORE REGULAR PROGRAMS & ACTIVITIES

WORKSHOPS TALKS CLASSES STUDY GROUPS

FESTIVALS EVENTS EXHIBITS

visual arts

eurythmy music

drama & poetry

Waldorf education

self-development

spirituality

esoteric research

evolution of consciousness

health & therapies

Biodynamic farming

social action economics

UPCOMING EVENTS & OFFERINGS

ANTHROPOSOPHY & YOGA

monthly talks on their relationship, with David Anderson, Wed 7pm, from September 10th

TOUCH ACROSS CULTURES

and through the ages, with Linda Garofallou, Saturday, September 20th, 1-4pm

ART OPENING: LANI KENNEFICK

“Creative Forces,” an exhibit of paintings, the opening Saturday, September 20th, 6–8pm

MICHAELMAS COMMUNITY FESTIVAL

potluck, short presentations, music and poetry from 4pm, Sunday, September 28th

“BRAKING FOR ALLIGATORS”

the Kuehlewind Memorial Lecture, with Alexander Dreier, Thursday, October 2nd, 7pm

IMAGINING THE EMBODIED SELF

with Lynn Jericho, October 10-11, Friday 7pm talk & Saturday 10am workshop

spiritual, therapeutic, world & ‘outsider’ art

Dozens of titles by Rudolf Steiner, many others... Open Tues 3-5:30pm, Wed-Sat, 1-5pm.

SOCIETY

RSF Social Finance Annual Report

The 2013 RSF Social Finance has all the information and directions statements you would expect. CFO Gary Schick reports on key numbers:

RSF had a strong year of growth in 2013. We increased total assets by 7% to $163.4 million and grew total revenue by 5% to $20.2 million. In developing an increasing number of relationships with clients, we received a 13.5% increase in total investment funds, reaching over $100 million from 1522 investors. We also made $27 million in loans (12% over 2012) and $12 million in grants (50% over 2012)...

And he notes that “we continued to wrestle with the residual effects of the great recession.... The need for social finance is growing immeasurably, as more and more people call for change in the financial system.”

President and CEO Don Schaffer, however, leads with “inspiring stories from our community...” Human relationships are the strong and unusual foundation of RSFSF’s thinking. Where will a long-time client go when their capital needs exceed the current minimum of $5 million?

This is our next great challenge and opportunity in the social finance community. At RSF, we are seeing increased demand from larger scale projects for more capital than we can provide to any single borrower. Going forward, we don’t want to ‘graduate’ these clients to big banks. Instead, we want to create a vibrant trust network of participants who can come alongside us to extend these loans to meet borrowers’ financial needs. This will ensure that entrepreneurs know their capital is coming from deeply values-aligned sources.

Links: 2013report.rsfsocialfinance.org

HUMANITIES Anthroposophic Psychology

Settling on a less unfamiliar term than “psychosophy” which was used in the past, a group of professionals in the field have formed APANA: Anthroposophic Psychology Associates in North America. An early August seminar on “Psychology for Body, Soul and Spirit” launches a counseling certificate program with faculty William Bento, PhD, James Dyson, MD, Edmund Knighton, PhD, Roberta Nelson, PhD, and David Tresemer, PhD.

“We invite you to this quest to discover the heart of psychology... and address leading questions such as:

• How does spirituality fit into the developmental process?

• How does Anthroposophic Psychology’s comprehensive view of personality augment current theories and practices?

• How can modern pathology be interpreted as a means to discovering a path of personal development?”

Three different locations will make the full program more convenient. This first of nine seminars highlights the many approaches and practical aspects of psychology for personal growth and the helping profession.

Link: apana-services.org

MEDICINE Ginger in the News

The Journal of Holistic Nursing is publishing an article on an anthroposophic nursing technique, the use of ginger compresses or pre-made patches for symptoms of osteoarthritis. Health satisfaction in the test group went from 80% dissatisfied to 70% satisfied. Author Tessa Therkelson, RN, of Rato Health, New Zealand, commented that “this article allowed me to give more of a picture of anthroposophic nursing than any other I have written.” The Rato Health website includes a video and instructions on the technique.

Links: www.ratohealth.com/ www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24476702

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IN THIS SECTION:

Camphill Villages are highly developed social institutions, “intentional communities” designed to meet special needs. They reveal an intersection of thought and will where learning will be profound. To enrich this opportunity and provide recognition and credentials expected today seems like a very wise initiative. •

Threefold Auditorium has been home to so many artistic, social, and educational events. Now renovations and improvements will give it new decades of service. Importantly, the campaign to accomplish this is asking widely to hear the questions and needs which this beautiful space might support. • A review gives us a chance to look at the striking eurythmy initiative “Project Zero Circle” in Texas. We also have a final chapter on the Sophia Project in California, and a personal account of anthroposophy put to us in the most corporate of settings. Work in health and education round out the section this time.

Camphill Academy: Transformative Higher Education in Community by

Diedra Heitzman & Jan Goeschel

Editor’s note: The Camphill School of Curative Education & Social Therapy is becoming Camphill Academy, adopting the School’s Mission and Vision to take it further as an independently incorporated non-profit higher education initiative embedded within the North American Camphill movement. Incorporated September 29, 2012, it is governed by a Collegium, which serves as its ‘College of Teachers,’ with offices located on Camphill Special School’s main campus in Glenmoore, PA.

Adam Bittleston in his role as teacher at Emerson College would sometimes suggest to a skeptical or challenging student, “Hold it as a question,” when he presented a concept out of anthroposophy. That advice— to take a new concept and live with it, allowed the idea to settle into one’s daily life and to prove whether it became a helpful and elucidating idea or just not. It was a useful and freeing statement. Some ideas we develop throughout our own life experiences, sometimes even as prejudices or generalizations, and some we encounter through our more formal education. All of these we can continue to evolve through life if we are open. Some become our intellectual bedrock, our soul companions and our path to continuous discovery. For many of us, anthroposophy has given us those. It has also suggested ways we can be human, create culture, and address the most significant questions of our lives.

If education is to be authentic and valuable, it has to generate openings in our minds and hearts—it gives us tools and avenues: ways and means. What, then, are ways to share or offer anthroposophy? There is nothing in anthroposophy that cannot be verified by our own experiences and seeking. Yet it can be opaque to those who merely experience it through others whose cultural conventions may seem unusual. The “daughter” movements of anthroposophy can give opportunities to those who want to develop their own thinking out of life experience. When those experiences are combined with helpful concepts, a deep education can take place. Often superficial judgments about anthroposophy transform to interest and enthusiasm.

Contemporary college level learning often incorporates practical experiences along with intellectual stimulation. Practica, internships, student language immersion opportunities, as well as spring break service learning are sometimes available. That we learn and gain wisdom through experiences is well known. What are ways to combine life experience effectively with conceptual development? How is it possible to combine conceptual development with inner

Both traditional and experiential learning flourishes

insight and self-development? Working with these questions, coworkers at Camphill have formed the innovative Camphill Academy, formerly the Camphill School of Curative Education and Social Therapy. The Academy creates formal opportunities and spaces for learning within the life of its member communities, including full-time courses of practice- and community-integrated studies in the fields embraced by the work of Camphill. It aims to provide college level transformative learning that allows individuals to unfold their potential to contribute to healing—of the human being, society, and the earth. Students experience immersive and experiential learning, as well as conceptual and inner life enhancement. They participate in programs uniting knowledge, art, and practice through the cultivation of anthroposophy as founded by Rudolf Steiner and the approaches to action research, phenomenological study, and contemplative inquiry that arise from it. As an expression of the activity of the School of Spiritual Science, the Camphill Academy seeks to be a force for renewal in the context of North American higher education.

As a community of learning, the Camphill Academy includes participating member communities of the Camphill Association in North America and the North American Council of Anthroposophic Curative Education and Social Therapy. Experienced coworkers, most of whom have significant anthroposophical training as well as university degrees, are faculty and mentors. Their own education has been furthered by their work in Camphill, and they in turn can teach and guide newer coworkers who choose to take the Academy’s offerings. Students can experience intensely human encounters, deepening their understanding of themselves and others—of the human experience—from experiencing community life with those who are considered “less abled” or atypical. Combined with organizational, ecological experiences and course work including the arts, life and learning can take place in increasingly healthful ways. Students can “hold as questions” new ideas and concepts, as life and work unfold daily, demanding skill and new approaches.

Already in 2005, 2007 and 2010, the Program was evaluated by the National College Credit Recommendation Service of the University of the State of New York and received college credit recommendations, allowing students to earn transferable undergraduate credit and complete BA degrees through cooperation with accredited BA completion programs. In 2008, the first student received his BA in Education with a Competency in Curative Education from Prescott College. This partnership continues to evolve, and graduates of the program have continued as graduate students in master’s programs, including teacher certification programs, and have established themselves as professionals in fields as varied as child development, human services, social farming, non-profit management, and international aid work. The Academy is also collaborating with the Waldorf Education faculty at Antioch University New England to offer a new advanced-track MEd with a Transdisciplinary Focus on Healing Education [ www.antiochne.edu/teacher-education/waldorf/ ].

Higher education gets a lot of press these days— mostly because students who long for the credentials, if not the education itself, often are in the position of remaining in debt for a very long time in order to meet the costs. In fact, forprofit colleges are now being viewed as the next attempt to entice low income youth into taking on huge debt—and profiting as the government pays colleges via grants and loans. The Academy’s programs do not require funding from individual students. Students’ full participation in the program in a Camphill or North American Council community’s life is supported by the member communities, by the Camphill Foundation, and by charitable gifts to the Camphill Foundation. To learn more about the Camphill Academy, visit www.camphillschool.org

Diedra Heitzman, MSW, (diedra@camphillkimberton.org) is Secretary of the Board of Directors and Resident Volunteer at Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, Pennsylvania.

Jan Goeschel , MA, PhD, is a trained Waldorf teacher and curative educator, currently serving as Director of the Camphill School of Curative Education and Social Therapy.

Aiming for the horizon: both dramatic and movement arts are part of the cultural fare...

A Portal of Initiations

by Threefold Educational Center staff

For almost sixty-five years, Threefold Auditorium has served cultural life and the anthroposophical movement with only essential maintenance and repairs. In June we launched a $1.7 million capital campaign to preserve the building’s historic elements, and to completely upgrade and update its systems and spaces to ensure its continued service to our movement, and the world.

A $350,000 gift from Herbert H. Hagens will fully fund design and construction in August of new electrical, sewer and municipal water lines to the building. Work on the auditorium, which was designed in the late 1940s as a permanent home for the Threefold community’s anthroposophical summer schools, will include installation of a modern heating and air-conditioning system to allow the building to be used in the summer months.

The redesigned interior will offer flexible spaces that can be readily adapted to future needs as they arise. Plans include renovated spaces for work and study, and a complete restoration of the building’s unique interior surfaces, with special attention to the remarkable acoustics and custom woodwork in the auditorium.

The entire project is built around a thorough, ongoing evaluation of the needs of all the institutions in the Threefold community and beyond, today and in the future. Threefold Educational Center Executive Director Rafael Manaças and a steering committee of board and community members are actively seeking input to ensure that the renovated building best meets the needs of its present users, and will be adaptable to future needs. Since its dedication in 1949, the auditorium has continuously nurtured the anthroposophical movement in ways large and small, many of them never foreseen by its original builders:

• The site of countless eurythmy performances, the auditorium has been a key teaching space for the School of

Eurythmy since its founding in 1972 and is home stage and rehearsal space for the Eurythmy Spring Valley ensemble.

• Since the 1950s, the auditorium has been home for the Threefold Mystery Drama Group and performances of Rudolf Steiner’s mystery dramas under the direction of Hans Pusch, Peter Menaker, and Barbara Renold.

• The editorial and business offices of Anthroposophic Press were here from the mid-1960s into the 1980s.

• The Biodynamic Association held annual meetings in Threefold Auditorium from 1949 until 1980; the renascent BDA held a landmark national conference here in 2010.

• The Biochemical Research Laboratory founded by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer had labs and offices in Threefold Auditorium from 1949 until it closed in 1976.

• Since 2011, the Otto Specht School (providing Waldorf education to children with learning differences) has had offices and classrooms in Threefold Auditorium.

• The Anthroposophical Society in America has held many Annual General Meetings in Threefold Auditorium, most recently in 2009.

• In June of 2014, Threefold Auditorium was home to the InPower youth conference, brought nearly 100 young people from every corner of the country. Remaining work on the auditorium will begin when the goal of $1.37 million is met. Donations can be made online at www.threefold.org/auditorium, where updated information about the campaign. To learn more, contact Rafael Manaças: Rafael@threefold.org or 845-352-5020 x12.

The Threefold Auditorium

by Torin M. Finser, PhD

For most of its long and rich history, the Threefold auditorium has been a cultural center that brought people together within the community and from around the world for summer conferences. It has served as a living

Original view from the air (above); watercolor impression of one of the front doors (below).

symbol of anthroposophical work in America.

As a child growing up in the threefold community in what was then commonly referred to as the town of Spring Valley, the images of the auditorium form a wonderful collage of memories, a few of which I will share.

I remember the two key individuals who helped design and fund the initial building sitting in the front row of performances: Charlotte Parker and Ralph Courtney. They came as close to royalty as we Americans could experience, riding around the community in a large 50s era car, presiding at the head of the long table in the dining room, and establishing a community based on threefolding ideals. They attracted many of the early members of the community and generously supported the unfolding of threefold as a conference center.

In December the auditorium always hosted the Oberufer plays, which children from Green Meadow were fortunate to attend year after year: Howland Vibber was the quintessential God, Arnold Logan was frequently Adam, Christine Sloan the most beautiful angel ever, Peter Clem spent many a year as Joseph, Colin Young and others were rollicking shepherds, and Walter Leicht (architect of Green Meadow) a most frightening Herod. My heart always jumped a beat when I heard the knock on the back door of the auditorium and the first chords resounded in the hall to start the annual performances. The archetypes of these plays lived on in my soul life, giving me strength for later tasks.

Then I remember working behind stage on lighting during the mystery dramas. Then I had my first paid job as mail order clerk for the Anthroposophic Press downstairs, working for Sally Burns, Charlotte Driggs, and Gilbert Church—each one a strong character for an impressionable teenager!

For some years the opposite side of the auditorium’s lower level became a Décor Toy factory, and my father spent many hours working with students to cut, paint, and shellack wooden puzzles and toys. His ideal was to build a kind of cottage industry that would support students so they would not have to take out so many loans.

Then there were many lectures held in the auditorium, which I occasionally attended, especially after becoming a member at age 18: William Mann and his breathtaking lectures on art history, Francis Edmunds with his vivid imagination and stamping of a foot for emphasis, René Querido weaving a rich tapestry of anthroposophical threads… Then there were the eurythmy performances: Kari van Oordt, Lisa Monges and others, often joined by artists from Europe… The memories are endless. My favorites were always the tone eurythmy pieces.

So what does this rich history mean for a building such as the Threefold Auditorium? Are the plays, concerts, lectures, and experiences now engrained in the wonderful wood interior carved by Karl Schleicher so many years ago? Have the hand carved wood panels absorbed the cultural life of the place the way a musical instrument improves with age? There is a quality in the building today that speaks of history, and yet longs for the future. It could either become a museum or transform itself to serve a few more generations in new ways.

Because of the rich history of the Threefold Auditorium it is essential for the anthroposophical movement and the Anthroposophical Society that it remain a vibrant center of activity, a visible “face” for our work. It has served as a symbol of a rich cultural life, so needed in our time. For countless visitors for many, many years the Threefold Auditorium has extended unconditional hospitality to all who walked through its doors. It is now our turn to extend exceptional generosity to restore and preserve this cultural icon, not only for the sake of the local community, but also for the common human ideals we all serve.

At this time of St Johns, 2014.

Torin Finser is General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America

As a backdrop to flowers (above); windows and interior stairway (below).

Project Zero Circle

by Johanna Frouws

In May 2014, Markus and Andrea Weder of Austin, Texas, together with speech artist Jeremiah Turner, cellist Jun Seo, and violinist Risa Ano, brought their new eurythmy performance, Project Zero Circle, to Fair Oaks, California. I found it to be the most remarkable eurythmy performance I have ever seen.

Let me present a few disclaimers first. At 85 years old, I certainly no longer belong to the younger generation. I have had only limited formal education, and I have no musical talent to speak of. I love to paint, however, and even more than that, I love to garden. I love colors, and I love living things. And I have been a lifelong student of Rudolf Steiner.

So what was it about this evening of eurythmy that impressed me so much? The first part of the evening’s performance consisted chiefly of serious works by the poet Denise Levertov, interspersed with the movements of the Sonata for violin and cello by French composer Maurice Ravel.

The eurythmists entered the performance space from the front. From their very first steps, we could experience with how much love and how much presence of consciousness they indwelled the space. Their faces were very neutral, and very open, and we could see how their ears were opened wide to hear what lived or what was to come in the space. The connection between the two of them, and from the two of them to the audience, was palpable. Then the recitation began, and with articulate movements they brought the pictures of the poetry to life.

Beginnings

But we have only begun

To love the earth.

We have only begun

To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?

—so much is in bud.

How can desire fail? —we have only begun. to imagine justice and mercy, only begun to envision how it might be to live as siblings with beast and flower, not as oppressors.

. . .

From the project site:

Mission

The Austin Eurythmy Ensemble cherishes the spiritual wisdom of the human body in motion. By promoting social harmony and spiritual renewal, we seek to achieve individual, cultural, and global transformation. Rooted in the tradition of eurythmy as inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner and yet contemporary in artistic approach, the Ensemble intends to make this art form a relevant part of today’s cultural life. We are carrying eurythmy into the future by performing internationally and educating future generations of eurythmists. Our envisioned state-of-the-arts rehearsal and performance center will include an International Eurythmy Academy. This center will serve as a meeting place for visual, literary, and performing artists to inspire each other and for the spiritually curious and artistically inclined to build community.

What Is Eurythmy?

What is only heard is partly hidden.

The rustle of the leaves gently swaying in the wind, the flap of the bird’s rapid ascent, the sigh of a contented child.

There is a deeper experience of sound, one that arises out of our most intimate connection to the world – to the earth, to each other, to the intangible qualities of being alive. The inner life of sound reveals visible form.

“As in the ear, so also in the eye.” The fullness of the words of the poet, the static form of the pianist’s ode – these are portals into the fluid sculpture that speech and music create in the physical space of our world.

Eurythmy is harmonious rhythm.

The eurythmist, by observing the structural laws of speech and music, reveals the inner life of language and sound, creating a composition that uses the stage as a three-dimensional canvas. By joining with that which moves through the air as tone or language, the eurythmist harmonizes with sound.

In this way, the body is an instrument. It is no different than a flute or a violin, no different than a voice. Through skilled observation of the laws inherent in speech and music, eurythmy makes visible the invisible form of sound.

Eurythmy is not interpretation; it is a true sounding or singing through the body.

Andrea Weder was born in Germany and graduated from the London School of Eurythmy after previous training and freelance work as a sculptor.

Markus Weder

was born in Switzerland, where he studied curative education before training Eurythmy at the Akademie für Eurythmische Kunst in Dornach, Switzerland, and Eurythmy Spring Valley, NY.

The music was an intimate conversation between two instruments, and as the two eurythmists moved it together, I could see the conversation of the cello and violin imprinted into the space in front of me. The eurythmists’ gestures were articulate and graceful, corresponding exactly to what I was hearing.

In the second half of the performance, the eurythmists chose to do a series of Japanese tanka , short poems with powerful symbolic or metaphorical images, accompanied by solo cello works by contemporary Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina.

It was this second half of the performance that I found most riveting. The performers began by simply laying a long colored silk on the floor. This was intended to “augment” the mood imparted by lighting by bringing a “stroke of color” to the floor, much as a painter might paint a single line on a canvas. In the course of the evening, three more silks were also laid on the floor, a tasteful and very subtle gesture that helped paint the mood of the poems. We are not used to seeing objects placed into the space in a eurythmy performance, but in this case I found what they brought was not at all gimmicky, but truly relevant.

The tankas were delightful. Some were humorous—the poem about a chicken taking a dust bath, or the old man who mistakenly took his umbrella to a bicycle shop for repairs! Others were more serious, yet all were done with exquisite artistry; every single gesture was a perfect embodiment of a sound of language. Nothing was extra, nothing was contrived: everything was lawful yet beautifully original. Although some of the costume choices were surprising, I experienced them all to be perfect choices. For instance, Andrea wore a very bright red dress for a poem about a garden. Upon reflection, I realize that I instantly experienced in myself the counter image of green in my own soul as I watched her move in red!

It was, however, the eurythmists’ presentation of the solo cello work by Sofia Gubaidulina that most impressed me. This is music that I would never listen to in my own life: harsh and grating, sometimes shrill, usually arrhythmic. In many parts of the score, the composer merely directed the player to improvise for a few seconds, before continuing to play the scripted music. The eurythmists thus had to work in an active dialog with the cellist during the performance, “intuiting” with him in the moment what notes he would play!

And as I watched and listened, I had the ever-present experience: This is where humanity is NOW! This is what we have to hear, with all of its dissonances and strained harmonies and rhythms, because this is the perfect expression of the stretching and straining we are all going through now!

I have seen quite a few eurythmy performances in my life, and enjoyed most of them. Yet their memory was usually gone the next morning. This one continues to stay with me, even now days later. And as it goes through me again and again, I continually feel, “This is eurythmy for the future. This is what eurythmy is evolving into, and it is beautiful.”

Johanna Frouws lives in Fair Oaks, California. Project Zero Circle’s website provided the sidebar text [ www.projectzerocircle.org ].

Sophia Project

by Carol Cole and Robert McDermott

March 7, 2014 – third of three essays

This essay summarizes the results of the work of the Sophia Project during the past fourteen years. Although this essay is informative in its own right—the healings previously accomplished have been sustained—the full impact of the healing looks back to the previous two essays that recount the challenges of the mothers and children who joined the Sophia Project and the healing modalities that greeted them. The first essay describes the effect of the Waldorf approach to education and the Camphill ideal of community when applied to the transformation of 50 families and 140 children. The second essay describes in some detail the experiences of the children when served by an entire community consisting of co-directors, live-in staff and interns, and indirectly, board and donors.

Given the traumas experienced by the children and mothers prior to their coming to Sophia Project, it is perhaps excusable to repeat that “the children and their mothers who had been homeless and had suffered from toxic levels of stress, alienation, poverty, fear, and violence are now well. To date not one of these families has returned to homelessness, all but one of the mothers are employed and live with their children in their own apartments, and all of the children are performing successfully in school.”

Participation of the Mothers in the Daily Programs

Mothers and children who found their way to Sophia Project (almost always a young single mother with young children) were invariably in chaos and crisis. Being at risk of recurring homelessness, the young mother showed herself to be the picture of fear and intense distress. She faced many obstacles in the way of meeting the basic needs of her young children. It was the core of the Sophia Project mission to nourish and protect each child while helping each mother it admitted to the program to transition from terror and defeat to confidence and stability. For approximately sixty hours each week, forty-eight weeks each year

Excerpt from a mother’s letter

Dear Sophia Project, Thank you for all the support you have given my family during these past two years. Without your help I know I would still be in the situation that I found myself in. …I have been given the chance to obtain my GED. I only completed ninth grade so I am finally content with getting that part of my life closed and I know I will continue my education….I feel like you have provided us with proof that there is a different side to life. (my children) have experienced “fairy-tale” childhood under your quality care. Saying “thank you for having a program like this one” is not enough to explain how grateful I am to have Sophia Project in my life. Everyone is so qualified, sweet, kind, and lovable. . You talk to my children and to all the other children like they are delicate flowers; you treat them like they are so special to you. … In no way had I experienced this nurturing love from anyone before: it is so unique in my personal and children’s life.

for five years the staff of Sophia Project worked collaboratively to ensure that the needs of this mother’s young children were met while providing the mother with the time, guidance, and support to acquire new abilities to cope with her situation. To be admitted to the program there had to be available space, the family had to be subsisting on poverty income, had to have experienced or be on the brink of homelessness, had to be free of addictive substances (i.e. drugs and alcohol), and most importantly, the mother had to be willing to participate fully in all aspects of the program.

During the first weeks within the nurturing atmosphere of the Sophia Project houses and in close cooperation with the Sophia staff, the mother began to benefit, very gradually, from daily activities designed for healing both mother and children. Initially by watching, then imitating, and eventually by fully participating with the coworkers, the mothers learned a variety of cooperative activities and successful tasks. Crucially, they also learned to bring joy and dignity to daily life. Over the next weeks, each mother, with the help of the program director, crafted a plan in which she articulated her wishes, hopes, and goals in regard to study, employment, housing, parenting, homemaking, and personal growth for herself and her children. Concrete steps that were regularly revisited accompanied each area.

By an intern

Returning from the Peace Corps with a budding interest in early childhood education, I joined Sophia Project. There in West Oakland, providing childcare and support to families stabilizing after homelessness and other crises, I witnessed a miracle. I saw mothers complete a GED or job training, find work, begin to smile as they discovered a new image of themselves. I saw children come alive again after abuse, turn destructive anger into creativity, delve deeply into imaginative play that will one day become their adult capacity for aspiration and goal setting.

Sophia Project is winding up as an organization, but having witnessed success, I aspire to provide this quality of care to vulnerable families. In January, I began a master’s program in Infant and Family Development and Early Childhood Education at Bank Street College in New York City.

From the Fall 2013 newsletter

Through their participation in Sophia Project programs and working with the director during home visits, the mothers acquired, and then took into their own family life, relationships to simple cultural activities such as story telling or singing, as well as simple, enriching experiences in nature. Each mother brought to the project her

own determination to transform her life and the lives of her children. With the support of Sophia Project, they gained many new abilities, including appropriate discipline, an understanding of child development, bedtime rhythms, cooking, and mending. They were assisted in understanding nutritional information, food shopping, filling in job and housing applications, tax forms, and medical forms as well as opening a bank account, and many other life skills. Some mothers were tutored in order to pass high school equivalency or other tests. Sophia Project staff members sometimes accompanied mothers to medical appointments or parent teacher conferences. Mothers were also assisted in obtaining outside support such as employment opportunities or mental health services.

In time each mother gained or regained self-confidence and sense of dignity. Importantly, the mothers frequently told us that what helped them most was our belief in and our regard for them. Many of these still young women told us they were unaccustomed to having people “actually care what happens” to them.

As coworkers we were grateful for Rudolf Steiner’s well-known “Faithfulness” verse, which we practiced regularly for the mothers, the neighborhood, and ourselves. Here is the verse that proved helpful to the Sophia Project staff:

Create for yourself a new, indomitable perception of faithfulness.

What is usually called faithfulness passes so quickly. Let this be your faithfulness:

You will experience moments…fleeting moments…with the other person.

The human being will appear to you then as if filled, ir-

radiated with the archetype of his spirit. And then there may be…indeed will be…other moments, long periods of time, when human beings are darkened. But you will learn to say to yourself at such times: “The spirit makes me strong. I remember the archetype. I saw it once. No illusion, no deception shall rob me of it.” Always struggle for the image you saw. This struggle is faithfulness.

Striving thus for faithfulness, we shall be close to one another, as if endowed with the protective powers of angels.

At festival times the whole community of friends, coworkers, mothers and children in both the daily programs and family support program could leave our individual daily lives for a time and celebrate together. We shared the profound and beautiful Advent spiral, the joy of Christmas carols and Christmas cookies and of course Christmas presents. In acting out the play of St. George and the Dragon, the children transformed the bad dragon into a helping one over and over again, often right up to Chinese New Year when, according to our Chinese children, the dragon was very good indeed. The individual birthday festivals celebrated with song and story, are treasures still remembered by children and parents alike.

Overnight respite care is a valuable and effective relief from the fear, violence, and stress that poverty and homelessness create. This effective remedy was intended primarily for families in the family support program but it was sometimes needed when a family first arrived still in the midst of possible child abuse and other dire circumstances. Sophia House offered a safe, nourishing, predictable, and fun place for the children over the weekend. With the opening of a second residence, Myrtle House, a smaller respite care setting allowed us to meet the needs of the most vulnerable

families, particularly the preteen children in our population who are sometimes on suicide watch.

The Family Support Program provided several complementary opportunities for the Sophia mothers and children who had participated in daily programs for three years:

Serving as an Extended Family : This component has been and will continue to be an important relationship between the Sophia Project and the lives of every child and every mother who has fully participated in Sophia Project. It includes emergency and scheduled overnight respite care, individual meetings, workshops, guidance, referrals, home visits, emotional support, and outings and celebrations of the important occasions in the lives of the children and families.

Parenting Education: After the children and mothers have completed three years in the daily programs and are consequently not a part of an everyday ongoing conversation, the parenting program has become more distinct, more precisely devised to meet individual needs. It also provides additional opportunities for group meetings on particular themes.

Rainy Day Assistance : This component of the program assists families with what we might call the occasional shortfall such as an unmanageable bill (utility, doctor) or purchase of clothes, shoes, or a school uniform.

Leap Forward: Our families continue to transition from homelessness to stability through the support of our programs. We have helped them prepare to take the next step toward more active membership in their communities. They are now ready to give back to the community in which they live and work. We have seen, however, that they frequently need help in taking the next steps. The Leap Forward component funds larger one-time expenses that will allow the child

or family to take a significant step forward. These expenses include housing security deposits; tuition assistance for those children who have completed our programs and now need help gaining eligibility for academic scholarships; and durable low-cost furniture for new stable housing; adult education opportunities; and assistance for improved treatment of chronic health issues.

Loan Fund: This component allows our families to access short-term no-interest loans for personal or family emergencies. Typical loans are approximately $300 which they have paid back within three to six months.

Assessment and Program Methods

Child studies, including observations by teachers and other caregivers, children’s history, children’s art, family relationships, as well as other critical components, formed the basis of much of our ongoing assessments of the work with the children.

From one of the teenagers

When I think of Sophia House, I remember the warm loving memories growing up as a child. Sophia House has always been a place I felt loved and safe, and I always had fun. It was here I first learned to knit; to this day I continue to enjoy this activity. I love being creative and Sophia House was where I could express myself.

The friendships I’ve made at Sophia House are priceless. I met two of my closest friends here. One I happen to go to school with. Sophia House will always be a part of who I am. It will always be in my heart. I could never forget this place and the sweet memories I made being a part of here. It means that much to me. Sometimes I wish I were a child again so I could relive the time I spent here at Sophia House.

This is my inspiration, to give back to people, to my community, children, and people who have been through similar situations as me. To teach people what I’ve learned, to inspire someone to do something they love or to give a helping hand. This is what I want to do in my future. My inspiration came from Sophia House and the people here that love me so much.

In part to satisfy the needs of our foundation funders, we also developed an outcome measurement system that tied the needs of the incoming children and their families to the program methods and ultimately to changes in health and wellbeing of the children and families. The system is comprised of twelve child indicators of development and four parent indicators of functioning which we used in a system of assessment at specified points in the history of the participation of the families in the Sophia Program. Faithful implementation of this assessment tool easily satisfied the needs of our funders for measurements and also protected the integrity of the programs.

From the Fall 2012 newsletter. The writer entered San Francisco State University in 2013 and achieved a 3.75 average her first semester.

trickle down to the children.1 Similarly, the project recognizes that the cumulative deficits affecting children from disadvantaged families build up over their preschool years resulting in substantial and persistent gaps between poor and middle class children not solely explained by monetary resources.2 Sophia Project also focused on resiliency,3 the foundational nature of some aspects of child development,4 and the methods resonated with the research at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University concerning successful programs for vulnerable young children.

Results

In 2009 two-thirds of the children and families were coming to the natural end of their time in the daily program. In June 2010 the remaining third of the children and families were scheduled to complete their daily program and would then begin the two-to-three year process of strengthening their gains. As these families became free from the need for daily assistance they transitioned to the family support program. This would have been the natural time to admit new children and their mothers. To do so would have required at least two experienced co-workers to make a five-year commitment to lead all aspects of the work. Sophia Project had undertaken an extensive search a for long-term director but, despite the enthusiasm of staff, board, and donors, no one could

1 See for example Pamela A. Morris, et al., “Effects of welfare and employment policies on young children: Social Policy Report, Vol. XIX, No. 2, 2005.

2 Research discussed in Paul Tough, “What it Takes to Make a Student,” New York Times Magazine, December 26, 2006.

The program methods for work with vulnerable children and families applied by Sophia Project are supported by current research in this field. Sophia Project recognizes that gains made by the mothers would not immediately

3 For example, Emmy E. Werner and Ruth S. Smith, Journeys From Childhood to Midlife: Risk, Resilience and Recovery. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001.

4 T. Berry Brazelton, MD and Stanley Greenspan, MD. The Irreducible Needs of Children: What Every Child Must Have to Grow, Learn, and Flourish. Cambridge, MA: DeCapo Press, 2000.

be found. Sustained relationship is essential to the healing; at least a four-year commitment is required. The directors were committed to seeing all the families through the family support phase but they had reached a point in life which would no longer support long hours of intensive service. In 2010, when all the families completed their time in the daily program, the full-time in-house daily program closed. The directors continued the Family Support Program through December 2013. Although Sophia Project as a non-profit legal, financial, and cultural community is being dissolved, its co-directors continue to meet the human needs of the children and families as long as necessary.

organizations committed to serving vulnerable children and families.

Nearly one-quarter of the children in the United States live in poverty. Yet their voices and those of their mothers are not sought out as a source for solving the myriad social problems created by poverty and vast inequality. On their own such parents cannot access the relevant decisionmaking forums. Those who hold the power to make decisions affecting poor families increasingly have very little experiential knowledge of the circumstances and challenges of poverty. Sophia Project has shown that given the necessary resources these children and their mothers can gain a critically important understanding of especially the educational and social aspects of poverty, as a result of which they embody the solutions. These families bring not only the voice of poverty; they also bring an authenticity and deep knowing that illumines these seemingly intractable problems. Many of today’s most pressing issues of power, rank, and privilege will be best addressed by children from this population who came from poverty, have been met with care and inclusion, and have developed sustaining personal strengths

Sophia Project’s way of working brought profound and enduring transformation to its families as well as to its staff and co-workers. Most remarkably, the children and mothers who had previously experienced homelessness, alienation, poverty, and abuse are all well. Teachers and community leaders regularly comment on the compassion, creativity, resilience, and enthusiasm that Sophia Project children possess. All of the families remain housed. All but one of the mothers is stable and employed. The families have become agents of positive change within their own communities. Thirty-five interns worked and received effective training at Sophia Project; two thirds of these interns continue to work in

We have written these three essays to show the healing capacities of the Camphill ideal of community and Waldorf approach to early childhood learning in an inner-city community, not only for the reader’s information but in the hope that they will inspire others to create healing places and services for children and others in dire circumstances such as everyone served by Sophia Project.

Carol Cole (carolfrancescole@gmail.com) co-founded and directs Sophia Project. Robert McDermott (rmcdermott@ciis.edu) is board chair of Sophia Project and president emeritus of the California Institute for Integral Studies.

Anthroposophical Impulse in Training at Citigroup

by Vincent Roppolo

“Dance, dance, or we are lost.” —Pina

Bausch

No matter what I am teaching or facilitating, it is a dance. A dance with participant and teacher, participant and participant, or solo. In the movement, in the stillness, in the journey, there comes a freedom. In the freedom comes the knowing.

Anthroposophy has inspired and influenced my life for the past twenty-five years and continues to do so. The threads in my life have been interwoven with studies and work in dance, shiatsu, theater, finance, and teaching. The past nineteen years of my life have been devoted to the development of myself and of others at Citigroup, the parent company of Citibank. As a member of the Training and Development team, I am fortunate to give my time and efforts to creating a safe environment for participants to explore their human nature.

I facilitate a number of classes ranging from “Presentation Skills” and “Team Building” to “Sales and Orientation” to the culture here at Citi. The facilitation is where my connection to anthroposophy has given me the possibility to create and offer to people in a collaborative atmosphere the impulse to look within and outwardly and to work with their capacities for thinking, willing, and feeling.

Many of the exercises in the classes allow individuals to find their own answers, rather than being given solutions directly. In the class participants are usually very willing to explore and share their experiences, and later with their colleagues to relate their struggles and accomplishments with the work.

Often when working in separate team groupings, I ask that the groups work together according to astrological signs and this usually creates a dynamic dialogue around this topic. Movement is also one of the tools I use in bringing freedom into the space. Participants are encouraged to move about the room, to explore both the space and their own physical posture and uprightness.

Based on my studies in the Michael Chekhov acting techniques, I often work with the “four elements”—earth,

air, water, fire. I have worked with groups doing some of the Chekhov physical exercises, exploring the space with their bodies, with the imagination of molding their physical being in the clay of the earth—and then interacting with one another while keeping the atmosphere that has been created. Then we continue with air, fire, and water, experiencing the difference in the qualities of movement and atmosphere created.

When put into a role play situation here in bankerclient interactions, participants are able to discuss and share the differences in the atmospheres they can create through imagination. This helps people understand the connection to Citi’s “Client Principles” and to values we cultivate regarding one another and clients. The elements also come into focus working with the team building classes, which are based on Carl Jung’s theory of the dichotomies of personality preferences.

The work is also very productive sometimes when we work with different centers of the body as a focus: the heart as the center, for example, or the nose as the center, and so forth. Discussions are encouraged to share experiences both in and out of the class and both in and out of the world of finance. The dialogues these exercises inspire are often profound for the participants.

What is most profound to me is the heart connection that people make when they are in an environment of collaborative and safe exploration. It shows up in their relation to one another and their willingness to truly care about one another’s development and well-being. In a world of finance where much of the time is spent in the realm of the head, I find anthroposophy has helped me share the impulse to enliven our connection with the heart and to have access to what could be truly human.

Rudolf Steiner:

To find oneself in spirit Means to unite human beings.

To behold oneself in one another Means to build worlds.

Vincent Roppolo (Vincent.Roppolo@Citi.Com) is a business trainer and Vice President with Citi Learning-North America Consumer who has also spent many years in theater and dance. He was recently elected to the council of Anthroposophy NYC, the New York Branch of the Anthroposophical Society.

Actor-teacher Michael Chekhov (Ieft) and his friend pianist-composer Sergei Rachmananoff

Anthroposophic Medicine Connects

Anthroposophic Medicine Worldwide

by Peter Hinderberger, MD

Anthroposophic medicine (AM) is practiced in 67 countries. The International Association of Anthroposophic Physicians’ Associations (IVAA) [ www.ivaa.info ] is the umbrella organization for anthroposophic medical associations worldwide. Its website offers very interesting information. At the general meeting in fall 2013 all continents except Africa were represented. Hispanic speaking countries had a strong presence: Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, and Cuba. For the first time we heard reports from Japan and Taiwan.

Anthroposophic medicine is clearly expanding outside Europe—where the number of anthroposophic physicians is shrinking as significantly more physicians are retiring than the number of young physicians.

The challenges include official recognition in different countries and availability of anthroposophic medical products (AMPs), which varies from country to country even within the European Union. In Germany and Switzerland AM is fully integrated in the medical care system and AMPs are readily available, whereas in Holland, with a respectable number of people who use anthroposophic medicine, the classical AMPs are not available and need to be ordered by patients from an international pharmacy in Germany. Only a few countries like Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand enjoy the unrestricted availability of Iscador, the mistletoe extract often used in cancer treatment.

Under the leadership of Michaela Glöckler of the medical section [ www.medsektion-goetheanum.org/en/ ] at the Goetheanum, educational and post-graduate training have become available not only in Europe but also world-

wide. The International Postgraduate Medical Training (IPMT) was initiated in 2002. It is offered as a series of international annual course weeks for physicians and licensed prescribers. In 2014 IMPT sessions will be offered in sixteen countries: Argentina, Thailand, Philippines, Ukraine, USA, Malaysia, Australia, Taiwan, China, Russia, Czech Republic, Serbia, Peru, India, and Cuba. The international training seminars have also developed into valuable training opportunities for people from other healing professions, including therapists, nurses and pharmacists.

This is an exciting time for anthroposophic medicine. On one side AM is becoming more known and interest is definitely growing among physicians and consumers. On the other, the medico-legal and insurance world is becoming more standardized, which is directly in opposition to the individualized, human centered approach of AM.

Growing anthroposophic doctors & therapists

by Raphael Knauf, MD

We have started a small group of people at the beginning of their work in medicine who are interested in Anthroposophy and Anthroposophic Medicine. Our group currently includes nurses, therapists, resident physicians, medical students, a pharmacist and students of Naturopathy and Traditional Chinese Medicine. The main goals are to create a human connection with each other, provide a place to connect with Anthroposophic Medicine and to share questions, challenges and joys of our everyday work. We “meet” via conference call every one to three months, depending on people’s schedules. There are currently about twenty people on our email list; with everybody’s schedules being rather unrhythmic, our most recent calls were attended by four-to-seven people in various constellations. If interested or for more information, please contact Raphael.

Peter Hinderberger, MD, PhD, DIHom, is in practice at Ruscombe Mansion Community Health Center in Baltimore, Maryland.

Raphael Knauf, MD (raphael.knauf@gmail.com) is a resident physician at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, CT, and formerly are resident at the Ita Wegman Klinik in Switzerland.

Finding an anthroposophic physician or therapist; staying in touch

by Adam Blanning, MD

The Association for Anthroposophic Medicine and Therapies in America is now offering a provider directory. AAMTA [ www.aamta.org ] is an umbrella organization that works to foster communication and collaboration between the anthroposophic therapeutic professions: physicians and nurses as well as art therapists, rhythmical massage therapists, and practitioners of therapeutic eurythmy, singing, music, and anthroposophic naturopathy. There is now a place [ www.aamta.org/directory ] to find anthroposophic doctors and therapists listed by state, specialty, or both. It is a broad, diverse, and growing therapeutic community.

Join our mailing list and receive AAMTA e-news—a listing of upcoming events and therapeutic offerings sent out every two months, as well as our annual digital newsletter with many reports, photos and stories of the medical work happening in North America. Navigate to “Resources | Newsletter” at our site [ www.aamta.org ].

And in the coming year we will formally launch AnthroHealth, an organization for friends and patients of anthroposophic medicine. Its goal is to support your health and the growth of anthroposophic medicine in America . We would invite anyone interested in supporting this fledgling anthroposophic patient organization to reach out to us via the “Contact” page at the site. To manifest in a healthy way this new initiative needs the love and participation of many, both those working in the center of initiatives and those who are approaching anthroposophic therapies from “the “periphery.”

Sophia Micha-el Remedies: “Your Wisdom Medicine Source”

by Kelly Sutton, MD

A group of trained and licensed anthroposophic healthcare providers and artists have collaborated to create a reliable resource for public education on anthroposophic healthcare approaches to wellness and illness. This new website [ www.SophiaMR.com ] offers free online public education on the concepts behind anthroposophic medicine, and on its practical applications. The “symptoms and

treatments” section links to resources and a “healing community connections” listing informs about services being offered by various practitioners. Printable articles are linked from common questions like “What’s a parent to do when a child is sick with a fever?” or “Why is warmth important to health?” or “What do anthroposophical terms mean: etheric body? astral body? Why is ‘the ego’ a good thing—isn’t egotism bad?”

There is a newsletter and even a site tour on YouTube [ http://goo.gl/KkusM0 ].

Adam Blanning, MD, president of the AAMTA board, practices at the Denver Center for Anthroposophic Therapies in Colorado [ www. denvertherapies.com ]

Kelly Sutton, MD is a board member of Sophia Michael Remedies Inc (info@SophiaMR.com).

Freedom, Funding, and Accountability in Education

by Patrice Maynard

“Who says?!” was a main theme of our workshop on the last weekend of April this year. Twenty-four of us gathered in Hudson, New York, to explore burning issues facing education today. We counted nine other major events happening on the same day, perhaps underscoring the recognition in those who came of the importance of the assault we all face in the world of education. The workshop participants were affiliated with nine schools from five states.

Eight participants were members of a “think tank” initiative group called “Freedom and Funding in Education.” We have been meeting for close to two years to work together on the issues identified in the title of the workshop. One of the objectives of the group is to build up a body of informed ideas to share with the world so that thinking can be realigned based on facts and observation rather than on political and economically manipulated information. We do this with the understanding that thoughts are deeds, and they can be powerful in re-directing of ideas and actions for education.

Patrice Maynard presented on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and their impact on contemporary education. She raised the question: Who says these standards will help education? Who says children must read by age five? Who says children need algebraic skill in kindergarten? In many cases the answer to “Who says?” ends up being corporations and political machines!

The controversies in all states about CCSS indicate the level of discomfort they cause many. The disheartening use of testing to “prove” things and further economic and political agendas that are not educational is deeply hurtful, and most standards are not purposeful of goals we would endorse. Measuring the CCSS against the standards we hold as Waldorf Educators, wishing for children to be received with reverence and love, Patrice emphasized that it is more urgent than ever before to take

a stand and hold it firmly.

Gary Lamb then presented on social threefolding and the interplay among the three spheres and how they influence education. Pointing to the spiritual grounding of Waldorf Education and the urgent need for freedom in education at this time, Gary answered the question “Who says?” by directing us not to who says now but to “Who should say?” Answer? Educators!

Gary instructed on different kinds of funding strategies for education in the United States and carefully described why educational tax credits are the preferable solution to adequate funding that allows citizens and parents to have a level playing field in choosing educational approaches for families; and for tax payers to choose a portion of where their educational tax dollars will be directed. He concluded with describing our image of the Freedom and Funding in Education Think Tank, with its task and future plans.

Abundant discussion times were left after each presentation. One goal of the workshop was to enhance the think tank with experiences from different schools and individuals, and begin to open up dialogue about these burning questions. Questions ranged widely and helped the initiative group of eight in their discussions after the workshop to forge new ideas of how to re-claim education for the cultural sphere.

The afternoon was spent in two groups. Gary shared his experiences with CAUSE NYS, a New York Statebased activism group devoted to promoting education tax credits and assisting advocates in the independent school community to get such legislation passed in New York. Patrice’s group focused on accountability and alternative thinking to inspire new means to assess how and how much learning is taught and assimilated. There was discussion in these groups of the importance of longitudinal studies because the results of Waldorf education are most

Initiative group “Freedom and Funding in Education”: L to R, front: Val Mello, Jane Reid, Patrice Maynard, Chaddie Hughes; rear: Michael Lapointe, Gary Lamb, Gordon Edwards, Andrew Giligan

impressive when graduates become adults. Administrative staff from the Philadelphia Waldorf School reported on their school’s experience with the Pennsylvania corporate tax credit law in place there now for many years. Though there are some difficulties it does provide tuition support to some. All in the workshop seemed to agree that independent schooling is under extreme challenge at this time. The workshop generated some calls to action. One suggested using social media to keep people informed and to communicate together. Another at the event wanted to use the information gathered in the day to assure teachers and administrators that they are on the right track. Several participants reported this last reaction in different forms: inspiration to continue managing the stress to make Waldorf Education possible; gratitude for being made aware through the workshop of all that is actually happening on the ground; heightened awareness of the level of imbalance in our culture’s imagination of what schooling is.

The Freedom and Funding in Education initiative group, in meeting afterwards, felt very uplifted at the dedication, open-hearted thinking, and intensity of commitment in all participants. There was a call for more information-based workshops like this, with more brainstorming on how our Waldorf schools can survive in economically pinched times. — The Research Institute for Waldorf Education (RIWE) and the Center for Social Research collaborated with the Freedom and Funding in Education group to accomplish this workshop. Funding which made the day possible came from RIWE, the Rudolf Steiner Chartable Trust, and private donors. Gary and Patrice were grateful to be recognized in their work out of the Social Science Section in offering this workshop.

Patrice Maynard (patrice@waldorf-research.org) is Director of Publications and Development at the Research Institute for Waldorf Education. — To be put on this event’s mailing list and kept informed about the Freedom and Funding in Education Initiative’s activities email Gary Lamb (glamb@thecenterforsocialresearch.org).

Art and text

by Larry Young

This living plant reflects myself, but upside-down. What recreates lies not below, but at its crown. Its brain-like roots seek fossiled bands, my thoughts grow up to spirit lands.

Its lengthening leaves, their rib-like curls a mirrored guise of rhythmic realms where life-sap blood moves harmonized. A ladder bridge composed of air, from heaven’s gate to dragon’s lair.

Gary Lamb’s slide on the interplay between education and economic life.

From “Musings of An Old Fool”

arts & ideas

IN THIS SECTION:

In an article written for us in 2011, our first year, Andrew Linnell mentioned the surprise if not horror with which fellow students at Emerson College years ago had greeted his commitment to the technology field. In the vast, holistic work of Rudolf Steiner there is still a shrinking-away from the challenges of modernity— though they surround us now on all sides. For this issue Andrew takes up the bold, hopeful, and perhaps also foolish interventions we are making into our own organic nature. “What could go wrong?” •

We’re sure you won’t miss it, but we’re happy to introduce a “Gallery” feature into this section, and the work of Larry Young is rich both in arts and ideas. We hope you’ll follow it further online. •

And we spoke in our editor’s note already about the late Paul Scharff. Michael Ronall’s interview from 2006 is very rich; we have given it the title “The Art of the Caring Community.”

21st Century Eugenics

by Andrew Linnell

The new development of three-parent babies has raised again the ethics of eugenics. Three-parent babies is a technique where defective “parts” of a mother’s egg are replaced with “healthy parts” from an egg of another woman to form the ovum. This new egg is fertilized with the sperm of the father using IVF (in-vitro fertilization). The resultant zygote is then inserted into the womb of the mother for natural gestation.

This technique will help mothers who know that they carry genetic defects that they do not want to pass on to their offspring. The defect that led to this method being approved in the UK is mitochondrial disease. This disease affects the ability of a cell to convert foodstuffs in the blood into cell energy. The worst affected parts of the body tend to be those that burn the most energy: the brain, heart, and muscles.

This means that the disease causes stunted growth, visual and hearing problems, learning disabilities, neurological disorders, autonomic dysfunction, dementia, muscular dystrophy, anemia, gastrointestinal disorders, respiratory disorders, hypertension, lymphoma, seizures, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and, oddly it is claimed, obesity. The physical and emotional issues typically translate into lifelong suffering.

When sperm and egg meet, only the mitochondria from the mother’s egg will become the mitochondria of the future child. If you are hoping to be a mother but you have suffered with this disease as does one in 4,000 in the United States, then you most likely will be thrilled by this new medical miracle.

Best Body for My Life?

The medical ethics, at this point, seem to clearly bless this medical advancement. There are many more genetic defects that might be treated similarly such as Down syndrome and hemophilia. In fact, all genetically-based diseases might be overcome this way. Genetic forms of sickle cell anemia? Cystic fibrosis? Congenital heart defects? Spina bifida? Yes, yes, and yes!

Why stop there? Might you want a kid who will have a better chance to go to Harvard? Be gifted at playing the cello? Overtake Peyton Manning in the football record books? Why not fourparent babies? Why not n-parent babies? The modern family is no longer defined by the bloodline. How far should this go? Is it a slippery slope? By the way, California’s legislature passed a bill in 2012 allowing a child to have three legal parents; Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it.1

In the future we will more and more separate our concept of self from our physical body which will become more and more just a vehicle for our journey on Earth. When that comes to be, future humans will either 1) expand their consciousness to their other members (e.g., the etheric and astral bodies), or 2) have computers biologically linked their body, as Ray Kurzweil

1 The Washington Times, “California bill allowing more than two legal parents vetoed,” 2012-09-30, http://communities. washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/legally-speaking/2012/sep/30/california-bill-more-two-3-legal-parents-veto/. Gov. Brown: “I am sympathetic to the … interest in protecting children, but I am troubled by the fact that some family law specialists believe the bill’s ambiguities may have unintended consequences.”

suggested in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near.

Will the second path lead us to become more soulless? Will humans beings find it harder and harder to incarnate into a body so prepared—as Rudolf Steiner’s researched showed had happen once before in the time of Adam and Eve? Might both paths happen together?

Many will ask, “Why shouldn’t I receive the best possible body for my life?” The desire for a healthy vehicle to carry us through life is strong within humanity.

Divergent Paths, West & East

In November and December of 1918, just weeks after the end of World War I, Rudolf Steiner spoke about the growing interest in eugenics in the Western world.2 In the lecture series entitled The Challenge of the Times he said, By the eugenic capacity I mean the removal of the reproduction of human beings from the sphere of mere arbitrary impulse and accident. Among the peoples of the East there will gradually develop a brilliantly clear knowledge as to how the laws of population, the laws of peopling the earth, must run parallel with certain cosmic phenomena. From this information they will know that, if conception is brought about in accord with certain constellations of the stars, opportunities will thus be given for souls that are either good or evil in their natures to obtain access for earthly incarnation. This capacity will be acquired only by those individuals who constitute the continuation as races, the continuation in the blood stream, of the Asiatic population. They will be able simply to see in detail how what works today chaotically and arbitrarily in conception and birth can be brought into harmony with the great laws of the cosmos in individual concrete cases. Here abstract laws are of no avail. What will be acquired is a concrete single capacity in which it will be known in individual cases whether or not a conception should occur at a particular time.

With three-parent babies, we are venturing down this path of eugenics. But it is motivated to please the parents as well as a current of opinion in society wishing to improve its own genetic stock. Are we not better off having eliminated the suffering from polio? Is it not the right

2 Included in CW/GA 186: “The Mechanistic, Eugenic and Hygienic Aspects of the Future,” December 1, 1918, Dornach, Switzerland; http://wn.rsarchive. org/Lectures/GA186/English/AP1941/ChaTim_index.html

thing to eliminate such human suffering?

Steiner goes on to say,

This knowledge, which will make it possible to bring down from the heavens the impelling forces for the moralizing or demoralizing of the earth through the nature of man himself, this special capacity evolves as a continuation of the blood capacity in the races of the East. What evolves as a capacity there I call eugenic occultism. This…capacity…will prevent the evolution of humanity as regards conception and birth from taking its course according to arbitrary impulses and more or less accidentally.

I beg you to consider the enormous social consequences, the enormous social motive forces that enter here! These capacities are latent. It is well known in those secret circles of the English-speaking peoples that these capacities will evolve among the peoples of the East. They know that they themselves will not possess these capacities within their own potentialities bestowed upon them through birth. They know that the Earth could not reach its goal, could not pass over from Earth to Jupiter3 —indeed, they know that the Earth would within a relatively short time diverge from the path leading to its goal if only the forces belonging to the West should be employed. It would gradually come about that only a soulless population could evolve in the West, a population that would be as soulless as possible. This is known. [emphasis added ]

For this reason these people endeavor to develop within their own circles, through their capacities, mechanistic occultism. The endeavor is also made to establish a mastery over those peoples who will develop eugenic occultism. Every [esoterically] instructed person in the circles of the West says, for example, “It is necessary that we rule over India for the reason that only through the continuation of what comes out of Indian bodies—when this unites with what tends in the West in a wholly different direction, in the direction of mechanistic occultism—can bodies come into existence in which souls will be able to incarnate in future who will carry the Earth over to its future evolutionary stages.” The English-speaking occultists know that they cannot depend upon the bodies that come out of the fundamental character of their own people, and so they strive to possess the mastery over a people who will provide bodies with the help of which the evolution of the earth may be carried forward in the future.

3 Referring to the next stage of Earth’s cosmic development, as described in Rudolf Steiner’s An Outline of Esoteric Science

Genetics and Social Fitness in America

Less than ten years after Steiner spoke this, America was leading the world in a eugenics movement. Darwinian concepts had entered the social sphere. Traits such as intelligence, hard work, and cleanliness were seen as belonging to genetics and hence it was society’s duty to ensure that only the best procreated. Competitions were set up at county fairs to award blue ribbons to the best human stock. Alongside awards for the best livestock were awards for the fittest family or best potential baby.

Not only was better breeding promoted, eugenicists wanted to prevent the poor from breeding. They saw alcoholism, pauperism, and sexual deviancy as behaviors associated with the poor. They felt that “those good-fornothings are milking the welfare system.” And eugenicists feared that the poor were more sexually active and irresponsible ending up producing too many future bums.

Eugenicists had a major role in the Immigration Act of 1924 that set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed, by eugenicists, to have inferior stock. Thus, immigration from Southern Europe, Africa, and Asia was limited. President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice president, “America should be kept American…. Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.” Sweden had a eugenics program that continued until 1975. Immigration debates in Europe and America continue to hear the voice of eugenics.

History of Western Eugenics

The history of eugenics is itself interesting. Francis Galton ( photo at right), a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, is considered the father of modern eugenics, coining the word by putting together the Greek eu (well) and genēs (born). In 1883, Galton published his observations and conclusions in a book entitled  Inquiries

into Human Faculty and Its Development. 4 He was convinced that the racial quality of future generations will improve via eugenics.

A protégé and biographer of Galton, Karl Pearson (1857-1936), founded the first statistics department at a university. Trained in many fields including physiology, Pearson claimed in his 1912 lecture “Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics: An Address to the Medical Profession” that everything concerning eugenics falls into the field of medicine. As a foreshadowing of three-parent babies, he stated that eugenics will be able to eliminate hereditary diseases such as hemophilia and Huntington’s disease.

By the late 1920s, American eugenicists produced dramatic literature promoting eugenics and sterilization. This spread to other countries, especially to German scientists and medical professionals. Soon California led the world in forced sterilization. The forced sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was inspired by California’s. Key to funding this movement was the Rockefeller Foundation who helped develop German eugenics programs. California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe wrote to a colleague, You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought… I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.5

4 Wikipedia on Francis Galton; [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiries_ into_Human_Faculty_and_Its_Development ]

5 Black, Edwin, “Eugenics and the Nazis—the California Connection,”

From top: 1915 Wall Street proeugenics demonstrators; “Fittest Family” winners at a fair in Topeka, Kansas; poster board with eugenicist ideas, circa 1926.

Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf, had praised eugenic ideas and later ensured eugenic legislation was enacted and carried out. By 1934, in Germany alone more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized.

Harry H. Laughlin developed Model Eugenic Sterilization laws that, in 1935, were implemented in the Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.6 Because of this, Laughlin received an honorary doctorate for his work on the science of racial cleansing at an award ceremony in Germany (this happened to be on the anniversary of Hitler’s 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty, where the ceremony took place). Laughlin proclaimed a “common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics.” 7

Who else were proponents of Western-style eugenics?

Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Margaret Sanger, John Harvey Kellogg, and Linus Pauling are just a few. When did this movement stop in America? Once we saw how eugenics had led in Nazi Germany to concentration camps and mass sterilizations, Americans backed away in horror.

Both Safety and Ethics

There are arguments against three-parent IVF being made from religious groups and centers for ethics.

Wesley J. Smith writes in “Now Is The Time To Stop Three-Parent IVF,”8 that these matters “involve both safety and ethics. We already know that children born via IVF have poorer health outcomes than children conceived naturally. The danger would probably be even more pronounced with three-parent reproduction. For example, the technique literally uses broken eggs. Mammal cloning—which involves a similar genetic modification of eggs—can lead to terrible developmental problems during gestation and born clones often have significant

SFGate, Nov. 9, 2003; [www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenicsand-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php]; “Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of ‘race and blood’ in his 1902 racial epistle ‘Blood of a Nation,’ in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.”

6 Jackson, John P. & Weidman, Nadine M. (2005). Race, Racism, And Science: Social Impact And Interaction. Rutgers University Press. p. 123

7 Lombardo, Paul, Three Generations, No Imbeciles; Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008

8 Smith, Wesley J., “Now Is The Time To Stop Three-Parent IVF,” Center for Bioethics and Culture [ http://www.discovery.org/a/21961 ], September 27, 2013.

Gallery: “Morally Awake,” the Art of Larry Young

The process of creating images is a mystical path for me, an intense journey inward hoping to pass through the eye of the needle into a spiritual world on the other side.

For that reason my work is personal yet wants to speak to all souls on some level. However I want to be very clear about this, it's not about making art, it's about gaining a deeper understanding of humanity through art. It's about the soul spiritual and how that relates to human experience. And, of course, it's about personal transformation. My works are simply pages in a journal. It's therapy, and the patient is me.

Larry Young 7-15-14

Morally Awake

Eldridge Cleaver: “The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.“

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1978, Harvard): “If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history... This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward.“

Clockwise across both pages, from top left: Endura. Reaching for the Light. Spirit Triumphant. The Ferryman. Solzhenitsyn. Synthesis. Eldridge Cleaver

Clockwise from top left: Personal Demons: Sentimentality, Brutality, Apathy. Self Portraits: From Memory Age 12, Age 33, Age 44.

http://www.facebook.com/larryyoung63

Photo of the artist. Amusing Fool. Court Jester.

View more of Larry Young’s work on Facebook at

with accompanying texts by the artist and others, Rudolf Steiner, Goethe, Novalis, Valentin Tomberg

health concerns. For example, Dolly the sheep died before her normal lifespan, perhaps as a consequence of being a clone. Safety concerns are not merely conjectural. A recent study published in Science warned against moving forward with the technology because of significant health issues seen in three-parent mice.” Wesley concludes that finding our way with this “amounts to blatantly unethical human experimentation.”

While similar to a chimera that results from the merger of more than one fertilized egg, this new technique fertilizes a merged egg. Chimeras start out as fraternal twins. Then, early in development, the two embryos fuse together to create a single embryo. Chimeras have two sets of DNA. Some of their cells have the DNA from one twin and the rest of their cells have DNA from the other twin. The result can be a mixture of sexes for example. It is not known how frequently individuals are chimera, that is, people with two or more different genomes, but

studies suggest that IVF may increases this possibility.9

Ethical Questions

• Do we exclude people with genetic defects from parenthood?

• Does the fear of passing on a genetic defect amount to an indirect form of sterilization?

• Do we reintroduce eugenics with new unforeseeable consequences?

• How do we balance the welfare of future children with the moral health of society?

• Do we have the consent of future generations?

• Might something that is considered to be a genetic defect actually be an unknown strength for another malady such as immunity from malaria?

• Does IVF itself alter the fertilization and growth process in unknown and negative ways?

• Do we accept the potential of long-term consequences of these new techniques? Will all future generations from such a new line be at risk?

• Are we “commodifying” the relationship between children and their parents?

How does an anthroposophist approach this moral dilemma? One could say that a eugenics developed in the West and not in the East is likely to be soulless and to lead to evil uses. Another could say that they cannot sleep at night knowing that other human beings are suffering. Some may dismiss all this saying we already have altered our children with GMO crops, poisoned environments, ruinous education, and utter separation from nature— making this “small potatoes” in the larger picture.

Would general knowledge of karma and reincarnation help? Perhaps a bit, but I suspect we would still be facing this problem. The outcome, I feel, will have profound implications for the ability of humans in the far future to achieve Atma , that is, the highest potential of human existence and the cosmic goal of Earth where even the physical body has been spiritualized—where the flesh has been transformed to Word.

Let me know your insights.

Andrew Linnell (jandrewlinnell@yahoo.com), has served as president of the Anthroposophical Society in Greater Boston. He is a 40-year veteran of the field of computers and related technologes. Readers may wish to consult his article “The Destiny of Humanity with Machines,” page 13 of the winter 2011 issue of being human online at [ http://issuu.com/anthrousa/docs/being-human-2011-04 ].

9 Strain,

338: 166 [ http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199801153380305 ]

Larry Young, “Sinister Entities”

Lisa; John C.S. Dean, Mark P. R. Hamilton, David T. Bonthron (1998). “A True Hermaphrodite Chimera Resulting from Embryo Amalgamation after in Vitro Fertilization.” The New England Journal of Medicine

The Art of the Caring Community

Paul Scharff: “When you start, things come to you”

On December 26, 2006, Michael Ronall interviewed Paul Scharff, MD, co-founder of The Fellowship Community, in his home at Garden House, for The Listener, the newsletter of the “Spring Valley/Threefold” community in Chestnut Ridge, NY. Dr. Scharff died this past April, and Michael kindly agreed to share this interview. See page 56 for remembrances of Paul Scharff. Of related interest is the lecture by Rudolf Steiner on pages 61-63 about how anthroposophical groups prepare for future cultural conditions.

The Listener: The Listener has a theme for each month, taken from The Virtues. For January the theme is “Courage becomes redemptive power.” I thought of the courage it takes to start a new community, and the courage it takes to face illness and dying, and that you’d be the man to speak to that. What prompted you to think of starting a community that’s focused on the care of the elderly and dying? Even to say “dying” is unconventional.

Paul Scharff: The dedication story for the Fellowship Community was based on the Platonic virtues. Rudolf Steiner traces the evolution of the virtues from the Atlantean Mysteries, and then gradually from the East, through wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. They take their course, east to west. He said what we need to develop today is what it means to work. Courage was the virtue of the early Christian period and into the early middle ages, with its knighthood. Gradually, through the crafts, we develop temperance. The virtue of today is to redeem work. That’s the basis of a community.

TL: How does one redeem work?

PS: It’s the same as for the teacher in the classroom. One addresses the angel before one ends the day, and places that there to meet the angel the next day. As you do in a classroom, so one tries to do here when one starts the day with the morning meeting. Rudolf Steiner has given a beautiful prayer, on meditation with the angel, at night: Take counsel with the angel at night, He shows us spiritually the path of the day. Pray to the Christ in the holy night, He shows us spiritually the year’s sense of destiny. You could say that for the sake of the Holy Nights,1 but 1 Rudolf Steiner’s researches indicated that the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany are a “midnight hour” in the year when the needs and possibilities of the coming twelve months can be sensed .–Ed.

also for the sake of work. He gave that to a pharmacist. And that’s something that lies behind our evening planning. Many are not aware of it, but praying to one’s angel for the coming day serves the virtue of redeeming work.

TL: What does one pray to one’s angel?

PS: To meet the coming day with what lives in the future... It’s being able to turn to the past and live in the present for the sake of the future. That takes angel-consciousness—in order to go ahead.

TL: Did the Fellowship develop in a way that surprised you?

PS: First, in order to meet the redemption of work, one needs to ask, How can one do that? Ann [Scharff] was born into the “Oberlin in China” community. I was raised with a brother who was ill, forming a little community. Together we sought where a community for the future might be.

When one undertakes such an activity, one asks that in fact the future be addressed. And the future is always those who die. One dies into the future. One recollects the past. I wouldn’t say I planned it or imagined it. Situations presented themselves that one had to meet, so we came here. And the first thing that was obvious was that one needed a year-round community. Charlotte [Parker] and Ralph [Courtney] regularly left in winter for three months; Threefold was quite empty for that time. So the first thing was how to support year-round activity. Three things require a “24/7”: children, the ill, and animals.

The children were already here. Ann’s a teacher. They had started a school here, so the school was already present. My sense was that one also needed art. We had an artist here, Richard Kroth. I felt it was necessary also to have science, and that was here. Both disciplines disappeared shortly after we arrived; Richard Kroth died, and then Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. What also evolved after our coming here was a threat that the lands in the middle of Threefold would be sold. The lands of the Fellowship were owned by Lisa Monges. She didn’t know whether she could carry the upkeep, and she was talking of selling them to a developer. So, I think it was the middle of winter of 1959 or 1960, I got a call from Nancy Laughlin, who asked whether it would be good to purchase those

lands, and I said I think so.

Within the [Anthroposophical] Society already a Fellowship Committee had formed out of Christoph Linder’s wanting to do something for those in need. The committee founded the Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Foundation, but there was never a meeting of the trustees; they were so different that there was no basis for getting together. So I asked for that Foundation to serve the purpose of purchasing those lands. But I also had a foreknowledge of what might come with the future of social process for mankind. It was foreseeable at the beginning of the 1950s, that was that mankind was graying. And I call that one of the greatest revolutions that will occur in mankind.

It just so happened that I was assigned, as an officer in the public health service, to some of the first drafting of Medicare law. And as you know there were about 180 million [Americans] “in town” at that time; I worked in the adjudication process of those who were ill and seeking disability benefits. Out of that evolved the questions and concerns about how to help support older people and how to care for them. So I had first-hand experience looking at quite-a-handful-of-millions of people, and what was going to be the need. The feeling I had was, you can draft all the laws you want, you can make all the pennies necessary, but the worker, the therapists to care for the aging population vis-à-vis the newborn—that didn’t exist.

TL: The aging population vis-à-vis the newborn?

PS: The baby. See, that one has a whole spectrum of life as a basis and a need in social work, I would say that isn’t realized. If you look at The Karma of Vocation 2 you’ll see in the ninth lecture three requirements for the religious life of an anthroposophist: spiritual communion, care of all ages, and Gottesdienst [religious service]. And Gottesdienst is work. So I was aware that you needed all ages. I knew that; that to me was like reading from the book of life. Rudolf Steiner, with his descriptions of the ages of life, merely fortified that. And when I saw with horror what was being planned for the future: the older person stuck away somewhere in a house and the children somewhere separated off in some classrooms, I thought we were headed in a very, very difficult direction. Then of course in reading Waldorf education you know very well that Rudolf Steiner wanted that people who had work experience would become teachers for the high school. So my feeling was that people who worked over a period of time should gradually become able to do

2 Volume 172 in the collected works of Rudolf Steiner.

some teaching. You’ll see that we have that now, a bit. It’s not developed. A person comes, and they begin to work, and out of that work, they learn. And out of that they can teach. In the community itself.

You don’t see it; it isn’t formalized. If you formalize it, you risk that you create something that isn’t related to the individuals that are present, neither the ill nor the person who works. Because this is karma . It isn’t something you can lay out and teach. It is not possible to provide care in the same way as education. In education you’re redeeming your old karma. At the end of life the whole future lies open, as it does after about 18 or 19 years of age, right?

You know what happens to the original ether body? It lasts about 18 to 21 years in this day. In his descriptions of Egyptian Mysteries, Rudolf Steiner talks about the gradual diminishing of the activity of the etheric body as the intellect awakens and material culture advances. That’s why the Mystery of Golgotha 3 was necessary. At that time a person had ether forces until thirty. In [Steiner’s] time, it was about twenty-six, and he said there will come a day when the eighteen-year-old will vote, and then you will know the etheric body has come to the end of its activity. If you’ve worked with adolescents, you know that probably about 95% think of ending their life just at that point.

So the question is: How can one then serve? Schools were wanted; Richard Kroth wanted a school of painting, there was always talk of a eurythmy school, Threefold wanted to something with healthcare here. And the person that saw into the situation was Nancy Laughlin. She had been a foundling, and she was very uncertain of her own future in old age, and wanted to see something go in the direction of her concerns. She was concerned about having the child be part of the project, she was concerned about work with the land, so the three things that I mentioned to you lay in her soul: the care of the ill and aging, care of the land with animals, and then the care of all of life, the full spectrum of life. She couldn’t articulate it, but I could see it. You have to look at that as vital in what we are doing today. I didn’t “imagine” what we were going to do. I felt that destiny had to lead the way. And usually at every step I was—or we were—asked. I went to Europe to study in 1964, I got a telegram from her that said, “Come home—there’s 200 shares of Texaco so you can get started.” That was about a quarter of a million dollars. We’d managed to purchase the Monges’

3 Steiner’s researches indicate that the death of Christ on the cross brought new life forces into the life-sphere of the Earth which human beings can all on.–Ed.

land, and she gave the seed for that, unrequested. I tried to evolve that. Now that meant engaging all the people who were here. We tried to engage them, but it was a terrible threat to the situation, actually.

TL: What was the threat?

PS: To start an initiative totally independent of Charlotte and Ralph and the Threefold Group. Most of them wound up at the Fellowship at the end of their life, so the threat was actually the future not known, when they would no longer be able to care for themselves. At the Fellowship...there was a convergence of destinies, and others who had a sense that something is needed... That isn’t “what you imagine.” When you start, things come to you.

TL: That’s a very unusual approach...

PS: Yes, I think people should go about it very differently than sitting together and trying to create a common image. People should get together and find out who speaks the idea that’s needed for a situation. And here Nancy spoke when the land came; when it came to art, Richard spoke; social process, Ralph spoke; spiritual science, Pfeiffer spoke; medicine, Linder spoke. What one has is voices that are speaking. So it isn’t a matter of creating something, but of listening... To do something different with the finances... Arnold Lever again and again immersed himself in the ideas of economics. If you look at the Fellowship, you will see that a number of the lives of human beings who have died are actually working in this situation. And so, if you want an envisioning, often one needs the help of those from the other side.

That brings me to what is more Ann’s and my destiny. I grew up on Oberlin Road in Ohio and she grew up in Oberlin in China, and that is something about John Frederic Oberlin [1740-1826], who created the first kindergarten. He worked with communities [devastated by the Thirty Years War in Europe] that were inbred, dying, in terrible circumstances; he devoted his whole life to bringing something to those five villages. He married a woman, they had seven or eight children, she died with her last child, and then he and his departed wife stayed in communion for about nine years. He worked out of that communion and developed what I would say was a

humanistic “industrial revolution” before the industrial revolution took place. You’d be absolutely flabbergasted at how modern that person was. He’s the man that decorated the Christmas Tree with roses; he was obviously a Rosicrucian. Rudolf Steiner mentions that and says that Oberlin is a prototype of the communion with the dead that will be formed in the future.

So what I would suggest is that if a group of people want to do something, they should get together to see if there’s some common individuality, historically or among those who sit together, who’s on the other side. Take a look as to who that is and what they want of the future; look in the direction in which they might be inclined.

TL: How would it work for people who are in an education to become Waldorf teachers, or eurythmists, and they don’t have yet a working colleagueship?

PS: If they go into the history of eurythmy, they’ll find somebody; go into the history of dance, and go back to the Mysteries, you will find someone. There are people one meets, if one searches, wherever one wants to go. There’s always history. The illness of our present time is the total egotism of the young person who thinks he’s going to do it himself… [Ehrenfriend] Pfeiffer always said, They need to go find out someone who knows something about whatever they are pursuing, not just get together and think they’re going to build the world out of their ideas… Rudolf Steiner was terribly troubled that young people were not sufficiently aware of what was needed in their own questioning to find their way.

One needs a mystery center. That’s what I’ve been concerned with. We need a mystery center. The human being—the three things I told you—that’s the basis of the Mystery. The human being is the new Mystery. And that you can educate a person in a few years and come to a deeper, spiritual, esoteric life? I don’t believe it.

Oberlin formulated it: “Learning and labor.” But that’s not been developed. How to work, how to form work so that individuals will evolve as they serve, that becomes an economic process and a social process. Developing that has not been undertaken. Educators have undertaken… education! How did Rudolf Steiner start

A view from above of part of the Fellowship Community.

the Waldorf School—okay? [In the context of a factory— Ed.] And he asked that people gradually come to their education. What happens instead is that one develops an educational activity that secludes itself from the ongoing work of the day. And I think that’s often death. If you’re trained in medicine, as you know, you go through four years of medical school, then you begin. I don’t think you learn very much in medical school.

The esoteric aspect, the real esoteric, is communion with the idea. That’s your whole thrust, your work with [Rudolf Steiner’s] The Philosophy [of Spiritual Activity]. If you talk about devotion and service to God, you’re talking about fixing a chair, caring for whatever is needed. That can become an educational experience. Look for having all ages present in an education.

TL: What advice would you give someone who has come to Spring Valley to pick up anthroposophy…

PS: The bulk of individuals who come to Spring Valley or to the Fellowship often are in terrible need themselves. And then they begin, and they begin to learn, and they feel they have it in their hands, and then that the community should change for them. But what they need is the next step in their own change. And that step hasn’t been taken sufficiently at the Fellowship…

One of the reasons for taking up the Workmen’s Lectures here this Christmas, which is quite a change here, is so that one can talk about the workmen and what Rudolf Steiner gave to them. He suggested those lectures be a content for America, and only recently has there been enough interest that it was published. My feeling has been to get away from the Gospels and the usual Christological concerns, and find a Christianity more far-reaching... What is “Christian” lives in the whole makeup of every human being.

The question is, What is the deepest source? It is in sleep; it is in the lower senses, in the limb-metabolism system. That is where karma lies, but that’s also where the Christ is working. And when a person works, he then comes in contact both with the future and with the deepest level of human existence.

The challenge is in not being seduced by what is material. It is a real battle, because the material has to be dealt with—and then spiritualized. You’ll find people working at that when they make a medicine, or try to make a new machine, or conduct a

religious service. But you don’t find it made available for the well-being of the future of the earth and man. This whole Green Movement is going to take tremendously devoted individuals. To bring devotion, to bring what one has gathered from one’s angel at night, to penetrate each deed of the day—it’s going to take that for the future of mankind.

The future of mankind is there, and one sees that with individuals: you’ll notice how youthful older people grow here, and that’s an expression of the ether-body that grows young with age, and bears the real esoteric of the two initiations of Christian Rosenkreutz. He was first initiated in his teens, and again at age 86; he then lived twenty-one more years. He lived his life to come to Initiation. He set the stage for the human being to be initiated.

Christian Rosenkreutz needs to come before the soul. When you drive along Hungry Hollow Road and see those buildings up there, if anybody thinks this is Paul Scharff’s doing, they’re absolutely insane.

TL: Whose doing is it?

PS: Hosts of beings. I think it is the work of angels— in people—who are here. The dead and the angel-worlds are busy. People could not have such experiences here if the angels weren’t there. But that’s only because one works with the elemental world.

So you can try to patch that together!

TL: Thank you very much!

Michael Ronall (michaelronall@hotmail.com), the interviewer, received his MA in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research and trained in teaching at the Center for Anthroposophy in Wilton, NH. His writing has appeared in diverse periodicals, including Deepening Anthroposophy, the free e-journal which he helps edit.

Larry Young, “The Messenger”

research & reviews

IN THIS SECTION:

We were slow to get a really good biography of Rudolf Steiner in English, and when Christoph Lindenberg’s outstanding volume was finally available, it seemed only a moment later that Peter Selg’s multivolume work appeared in German. The Lindenberg biography is very well worth taking up, however, and its able translator, Jon McAlice, has given us an essay here which shows how much more we have to gain from a good immersion into Rudolf Steiner’s life and work when both are really considered together. • Two reviews follow from the Rudolf Steiner Library team. Both suggest that Rudolf Steiner’s central questions and researches into the human condition are more important today than ever. Both philosophy and religion are seeking (and resisting) new paths, new foundations even.

Rudolf Steiner’s farreaching contributions still remain very little recognized—a challenge which is surely now up to us who know his work.

“And the world became a riddle…”

by Jon McAlice

One of Rudolf Steiner’s greatest hopes was that his work be understood. To a large extent this hope went unfulfilled during his lifetime. Since then, aspects of his work have been taken up by various groups and individuals. Some, like Biodynamic farming and Waldorf education have become an accepted part of modern society. But have we begun to come to an understanding of Steiner’s work? I think he was and remains one of the most misunderstood figures of modern times—by friend and foe alike.

We can better understand Steiner’s work when we begin to understand his life. The former is the expression of the latter. If we don’t allow ourselves to be completely absorbed by what Steiner said—the maya of anthroposophy—but can move through the “veil” to an experience of the tensile character of his thinking and begin to recognize how this changes throughout the course of his life, we can begin to get a deeper sense of the path he travelled and then described. His own inner changing, the self-willed transformation of his soul comes to expression in the evolution of anthroposophy.

Perhaps the most dramatic transformation in his life took place in the years following the publication of Philosophy of Freedom and his articulation of anthroposophy as a path towards a conscious experienced understanding of the spiritual. Over the course of these fourteen years that bridge the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Rudolf Steiner went from being a little known private scholar with literary ambitions to being the acknowledged esoteric leader of a new spiritual movement.

At the beginning of this period is an experience, which, as Steiner indicated, changed his life. What was it? The discovery of the sense world. We know he was aware of the sense world earlier. He explores the role of the percept in thinking at length in the Philosophy of Freedom. This new discovery of the sense world has a different dimension to it. Steiner alludes to this in his autobiography: “I found in the sense world something about which no spiritual philosophy had anything to say.”1

What exactly did he find? This is a bit of a riddle. He never really says. Nor does he tell us just where or how this new and deeply moving encounter with the sense world occurred. Was it an awareness that dawned over time? Did it happen in a single moment? Knowing Steiner’s path, it was very likely a bit of both: a state of inner readiness, a momentary encounter, followed by an intentional practice—in this case the practice of thought-free sensing: pure un-

1 Steiner, Rudolf. Autobiography. p. 163

prejudiced observation.

The result of this encounter was a change both in Rudolf Steiner’s inner life and in his relation to the world around him. It also, in his words, “shed light on the spiritual realm.”2

It was in relation to this experience that Rudolf Steiner writes for the first and only time in his autobiography of meditation saying that in living into the contrast between the soul/spiritual activities of sense-free thinking and thought-free sensing, his “soul life had reached a stage where meditation became a necessity, just as an organism, at a certain stage of evolution, needs to breathe through 3 lungs.”4 Accompanying it was a deep desire to “experience life’s mysteries,” not merely grasp them theoretically.5

These inner changes came to expression in changes to Steiner’s outer life situation. He left the scholarly world of the Goethe-Schiller Archives and moved to Berlin. He began to take on responsibility, to place himself, as it were, on the line. He plunged into the social and intellectual upheaval of his time, adding his own individual and oft controversial voice to the contemporary choir of creativity and change. He accepted a teaching position at the Workers College; he became active in the Giordano Bruno Society, the Free Literary Society and Die Kommenden. He married the woman with whom he had lived for several years. In this period of inner change that accompanies his new discovery of the sense world, Steiner becomes for the first time in his life an active participant in the world around him.

The entire body of his esoteric work follows. The seed of what we know as anthroposophy only began to grow when it was able to sink its roots into the reality of earthly encounter, into the realm of karma, into the will-reality of the sense world. In 1912, when Rudolf Steiner first spoke explicitly of anthroposophy, he characterized it as a path to the spirit through the senses.

What I encounter in the sense world, the things that make an impression on my soul and that live on within me, shape me and give me the opportunity to become myself. Towards the end of his life, Rudolf Steiner wrote about this relationship in the following manner: “Man’s destiny comes to meet him from the world that he knows through his senses. If he can become aware of his own activity in the working of his destiny, his real self rises

2 Ibid., p. 164

3 x

4 Ibid., p. 166

5 Ibid., p. 164

up before him not only out of his inner being but out of the sense-world too.”6 There is nothing abstract in this statement. Rudolf Steiner is speaking directly out of his own experience. It is myself that I find in the world that comes to meet me when I turn my senses outward, looking, listening, sensing. This is not the conscious, reflective self, the worried self, the strategic self: it is the self of the will, the sculpting self, the shaping self. This self is present among the multitude of activities that lie beyond the veil of the percept. If I am to find my self, I must turn towards the world, I must not think of myself, of my own comfort or desires. These are for the self what the percept is for the sense-world: maya or illusion. Attachment to them traps the self within the narrow limitations of its own conception of itself. One becomes self-centered and in doing so, blind to the self at work in the world around one. One loses the connection to the forces of one’s own karma. One is cut off from oneself.

Today, it seems essential from a spiritual perspective to become aware of this dilemma. Much of what we have become accustomed to in the fast paced virtual world of what is becoming an increasingly digitalized society exacerbates the problem. If we don’t become conscious of the sculptural, reciprocal relationship between the forces of the self in the world and the forces of the self in the soul, we can very easily find ourselves trapped in an illusion, trying to navigate our lives guided by extrinsic markers: wealth, social acceptance, etc., or other people’s teachings and values. One becomes increasingly concerned with the opinion of one’s social surroundings and finds guidance in its accepted values and habits. These replace one’s own inner sense of direction and in the long run leave the soul empty, cut off from the source of its inner vitality. Losing the sense world means losing oneself.

For Rudolf Steiner, the discovery of the sense world placed him in a relation to his destiny, which made the development of anthroposophy first possible.

Jon McAlice (jmcalice@sonic.net) is a freelance designer and consultant, focusing on the creative use of time and space. A co-founder of the Center for Contextual Studies, his research in contemporary education (contextualization, the experience of meaning, the role of self-directed activity in learning) has aided the growing recognition of the significance of direct experience in the learning process. Jon is author of Engaged Community: the Challenge of Self-Governance in Waldorf Education .

6 Steiner, Rudolf. Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts: “Understanding of the Spirit; Conscious Experience of Destiny.” p. 39

Rudolf Steiner: A Biography

by Christoph Lindenberg,

translated by Jon

McAlice.

Limited-edition hardcover, 816 pg. SteinerBooks, 2012.

This is the most comprehensive biography of Rudolf Steiner currently available in English, an in-depth look at his life and work. (The first of seven English volumes of Peter Selg’s Rudolf Steiner, Life and Work is available.)

Christoph Lindenberg (1930-1999) studied history, English philology, philosophy, and pedagogy in Göttingen and Freiburg and from 1955 to 1980 taught at various Waldorf schools. After 1980 he wrote and lectured at the Department of Waldorf Education in Stuttgart.

Of the younger man, a student of Rudolf Steiner in the 1890s observed:

I never again had a teacher like him. He was gaunt, shabbily dressed. He always wore an old coat; his trousers looked like corkscrews, much too short and worn out. At first he sported a van Dyke, then a mustache, then he was clean shaven.... Everyone loved him dearly, and I would have, as would most of the others, gone through fire for him.... He was loving and concerned in a way that I have never again discovered in another person. Funny—I often asked my fiancée whether he was really as poor as he seemed to be; during breaks he always took a dry roll out of his pocket and ate it with visible enjoyment. But if you think that they left him in peace during the break, you are way off base. The whole group gathered around him and the questions were endless.

Bobby Matherne’s review of the Lindenberg biography includes this summary of Rudolf Steiner’s goals at the other end of his life:

The Christmas Conference of 1923 brought the Anthroposophic Society into existence thanks to the strong

will of Rudolf Steiner, who had previously stood on the sidelines and at this conference took over as President of the Society.

[page 674] Four weeks after the conference, he wrote in the newsletter, “Anthroposophy can only thrive as a living thing. The essence of its being is life. It is life flowing from the spirit. Hence it needs to be fostered by the living soul, in warmth of heart.” And shortly thereafter: “Essential to anthroposophy are the truths that through it become evident; essential to the Anthroposophical Society is the life that is cultivated in it.”

Once again we spot truths as Content and life as Process in his statement. For example, I can give you some Content, Karl Neilsen’s symphony The Inextinguishable, but only by listening to the symphony will you experience the Process, the life which one experiences while listening to the symphony.

Codices are dead maps of dogmatic statements, and Steiner wanted none of that in his Society.

[page 674, 675] Rudolf Steiner called the social tendencies that hindered life sectarianism and dogmatism. One of the peculiarities of the states is that he explicitly lists these two enemies of anthroposophical life: “The Anthroposophical Society is averse to any kind of sectarian tendency” and “A dogmatic approach in sphere whatsoever does not belong in the Anthroposophical Society.”

It seems to me that Steiner was saying in effect, “My karma has run over my dogma.” The dogma is dead stuff and deserves no place in this Society. To have an attitude of soul, there must be a place left for wonder, otherwise one can be left saying in chagrin: “No wonder, no soul.”

[page 675] Steiner included these two provisions in the statues based on the bitter experiences of the past years. Sectarianism expressed itself in a lack of interest for the surrounding world, the lack of openness for the world, an attitude of soul that had finished wondering about the world before it had been truly experienced. . . . True interest in the world cannot exist without the love for what is revealed in the world. It feels itself to be one with the world.

This spirit of being one with the world is alive today— I can attest to that from my February, 2013 visit to the Goetheanum with a group of Mi-cha-elic students from all around the world. Every one we met was interested in us and made us feel welcome.

Page numbers in square brackets refer to Rudolf Steiner: A Biography. From Bobby Matherne, A Reader’s Journal [ www.doyletics.com/arj/rudolf.shtml ]

Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century

A review by Sara Ciborski

Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, by Edward F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso and Bruce Greyson. Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, 655 pp. (+ 100 pp. references)

The aim of this fascinating scholarly book is to challenge the dominant assumption in mainstream neuroscience and cognitive psychology that “consciousness is the product of brain processes, or that mind is merely the subjective concomitant of neurological [physical] events.”

The authors have amassed a huge body of evidence that they claim makes this narrowly physicalist view of the human being not only untenable but empirically false.

At the same time they offer an alternative working model, derived from the work of William James and F.W.H. Myers, for understanding the relationship of mind and consciousness to brain and body, one which accommodates the evidence and restores “causally efficacious conscious mental life to its proper place at the center of our science.” Myers’s long-neglected two-volume Human Personality (1903) is a “systematic, comprehensive, and determined empirical assault on the mind-body problem,” and as such deserves re-examination. Kelly et al. think that Myers’s hypothesis of a Subliminal Self and James’s filter/transmission model of the brain—more on these below—offer rich possibilities for productive research on consciousness, self, and the mind-body relationship.

The authors are university-based scholars in psychiatry and psychiatric medicine, psychotherapy, psychology and neuropsychology, and philosophy. What makes this book important is that they issue their challenge while standing in the very heart of the scientific establishment. They write mainly for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in psychology, whom they hope to divert from the bedrock materialist assumptions of the field, but they also hope to reach the educated, curious general reader who is willing to make an effort to follow their

arguments and engage in the literature.

For anthroposophists of the latter category I heartily recommend this book. The opening chapter demands and rewards close attention: it is an overview of the development of cognitive, experimental (not clinical) psychology starting in the 19th century when psychology lost its links with moral philosophy and united with naturalistic science. William James, best known for Principles of Psychology (1890), was an exception. He avoided “premature and facile attempts at neural reductionism.” As the 20th century progressed, cognitive psychology moved through increasingly reductive approaches to the mind-body problem: behaviorism, identity theory (finding exact correlations between mental states and neural processes), the computational theory of the mind (CTM), which Kelly calls “one of the dominant illusions of our age,” biological naturalism, and today’s newest theory: brain-as-global-workspace.

Kelly describes the enormously significant breakthroughs in the scientific study of the brain, such as high-resolution electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which make possible precise observation of physiological processes in human brains. These technologies have (seemingly) substantiated biological naturalism—the theory that consciousness emerges from the brain—making it virtually unassailable and culminating in today’s brain-causes-mind orthodoxy.

Kelly et al. accept the evidence of brain technologies. However, they regard the evidence of biological naturalism (from brain imaging) not as proof of cause but as evidence of correlation and as support for the filter/transmission model of the physical brain. They advocate a “synoptic empirical” method for studying the mind-brain problem that also includes factual accounts of events wherein the mind is, or appears to be, causative. Follow-

William James, 1842-1910

ing Myers and James, they argue that such accounts have empirical status. So-called paranormal and supernormal events are not supernatural but are potentially explicable with natural laws that we have not yet understood. Nature is not to be equated with matter: to use a hypothesis of mental causation is not to resort to supernaturalism but rather to practice an enlarged scientific psychology.

F.W.H. Myers (1843-1901) was a Cambridge-educated independent researcher and colleague of James. He published between 1880 and 1901 and helped found the Society for Psychical Research, aimed at the empirical, scientific study of mesmerism, hypnosis, telepathy, hallucinations, and other so-called abnormal phenomena. His main concern was to demonstrate the possibility of the survival of the human personality after death, a reasonable correlate to the scientific demonstration of thought and consciousness as not mere epiphenomena of the brain but in themselves fundamental natural (not supernatural) realities.

Kelly et al. insist that neglect and outright dismissal of Myers’s work are unjustified and unfortunate. Science has ignored the “well-documented empirical phenomena” reported in the work of Myers, James, and other reputable researchers using impeccably scientific methods. In fact, Myers was “deeply committed to the ultimate lawfulness of nature and to the use of empirical methods.” He held that all phenomena, mental and material “are in some sense continuous, coherent, and amenable to the rational, empirical methods of science.”

Anthroposophists will find Myers’s concept of the Subliminal Self intriguing:

There exists…a more comprehensive consciousness, a profounder faculty, which for the most part remains potential only…but from which the consciousness and faculty of earth-life are mere selections….No Self of which we can here have cognizance is in reality more than a fragment of a larger Self… (Myers quoted by Kelly)

In Myers’s terminology, the Subliminal Self is the bearer of this larger consciousness, and the supraliminal self is our ordinary, everyday, so-called normal awareness. With limited space I cannot elaborate this, but it is clear that “subliminal,” which in Myers lexicon means “lying beneath [really: beyond] the threshold of ordinary consciousness,” is comparable to anthroposophy’s higher self,

or to use Georg Kühlewind term, the supraconscious: the source from which flow our spiritual faculties. Myers calls the Subliminal (read Higher) Self the true Individuality. James took from Myers and further developed the theory of the brain as filter; this is the transmission model according to which the brain selects from a more extensive consciousness, the realm of Myers’s Subliminal Self. James argued that “Matter [the brain] is not that which produces consciousness but that which limits it, and confines its intensity within certain limits. This suggests a striking (though not exact) parallel with Steiner’s concept of brain-as-mirror.

The main body of Irreducible Mind is an exhaustive review of the literature (case studies, scientific reports, philosophical and religious perspectives) on the full range of what psychologists consider to be abnormal or “rogue” mental phenomena: psychosomatic healing; past life memories (reincarnation); automatisms and psi phenomena (ESP, psychokinesis, precognition); placebo effects; meditation and healing; near death experiences (NDEs); out of body experiences (OBEs); genius; hallucinations; and mystical experiences.

The chapter on psychophysiological influence is a good example of the scope of each of the others. The author here, Emily Kelly, reviews hundreds of well-attested cases in psychosomatic medicine and psychoneuroimmunology in which a change in mental state clearly seems to be the initiating cause, and a change in a physical state the results; these cases are beginning to persuade scientists of the important role of mental formations in health and healing. For example, the case of a man who was told that he had incurable cancer of the liver, who died, and who was then found (in an autopsy) to have an insignificant tumor, too small to have caused death. And the case of a 43-year-old woman who died after minor surgery: a fortune-teller years before had told her she would die at age 43 and the woman had told a nurse she would not survive the operation.

Other cases under these headings make for fascinating reading: bereavement and mortality; sudden and voodoo death; postponement of death; meditation and healing; placebo effects—which are accepted by science; faith healing; sudden skin changes; false pregnancy; stigmata; multiple personality, in which, for example, the person has marked, measurable differences in visual acuity or other physical attributes, depending on which personality

F.W.H. Myers (1843-1901)

is in charge; distant mental influences; hypnosis-induced analgesia and healing of burns and warts.

Kelly fully examines the reliability of the accounts in every case and evaluates the mainstream explanations. In general, mainstream scientists explain away the event by attributing a physiological basis to the mental state. That is, they grant that the emotion or thought of the subject is causal, but that emotion is itself “only” a neurological process in the brain. But this, she points out, only shifts the problem of explanation to another realm: how does the brain-based emotion bring about the physiological effect?

Physicalist explanations of hypnotic analgesia say that the brain produces the needed neurochemicals or blocks the relevant neural pathways. But how does it know to do this? What is the mechanism that brings this about? Science has no answer. In all the physicalistbiological-neurological explanations based on cerebral mechanisms the same question remains: what sets those processes in motion to bring about the desired effect?

Especially resistant to physicalist explanations are volitional cases. She cites the case of the yogi who voluntarily stopped his heart beating for five days—this was recorded by an EKG—and survived. And the subject who demonstrated for a researcher his control of his heart rate, raising it by imagining he was racing to catch a train and lowering it by imagining he was lying in bed. In fact, she says, volitional control of our ordinary muscular activity—how the intention to raise an arm translates into the appropriate motor response—remains a mystery, encapsulating the mind-body problem in its essence. The problem cannot be magically erased by simply asserting that the intention and the response are both brain processes. Indeed. That we don’t know how we will, that of all our spiritual capacities the working of willing is the most remote from conscious control, is known to any reader of Steiner’s basic books. Again I am reminded of Kühlewind, who not infrequently asked workshop participants to reflect on how it is that our vocal cords (and other physical speech organs) know exactly what to do when we want to make a sound or sing a tone.

The chapters on genius and mysticism, both by Edward Kelly and Michael Grosso, are long and very engaging. In the former they discuss language and meaning, non-discursive modes of symbolism, and the creative personality, with references to Kant, Maslow, Jung, and even

Aaron Copland. The discussion extends to a refreshing and respectful consideration of Coleridge’s investigations into the nature of human imagination. The authors explain the efforts of CTM to account for the mental activities involved in the use of metaphor and analogy, along with their rather devastating critique of those efforts: “all existing computational models [are unable] to address the fundamental issues of semantics or meaning and the intentional activity of knowing human subjects—the heart of the mind.” Some researchers have proposed a structure-mapping-engine (SME), essentially a diagram or mapping of ideas (objects and predicates) and their relationships, which the proponents of SME believe is a real step toward understanding how human minds think. Kelly and Grosso “register their astonishment” that these researchers think this explains anything, because they have set up these models already knowing the relationships. They “bypass the crucial issue as to how concepts or representations are acquired or constructed in the first place, leaving it to the designers [of SME] to provide all the necessary ‘knowledge’ in precisely the right form.”

As for mysticism, mainstream psychology has ignored mystical experiences despite the sheer volume of evidence. Kelly and Grosso discuss the phenomenology of mystical experiences, their cognitive properties (that experiencers are convinced they “know” something fundamental), the critical question of their truth value, the strong evidence of a “universal core” of common elements across cultures (for example, reports from subjects of different spiritual traditions as well as atheists describe an experience of an identity with some reality variably conceived as a “Universal Self, the One, the Absolute, the Ground of Being, or God”). The authors urge the undertaking of serious research aimed at a “more detailed, precise and empirically well-grounded phenomenological cartography of mystical states.”

They discuss meditation here (also in other chapters) and touch on Plotinus, Koestler, Yogic and Buddhist practices, Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, and other Christian mystics. They urge the taking up of controlled scientific research, taking advantage of the growth of interest in meditative practices and the number of educational organizations, like Esalen and the Institute for Noetic Sciences, which are involved in the study of meditation and other transformative practices. These could serve as resources and provide subjects.

Lead author Dr. Edward Kelly in EEG cap

research & reviews

Their chapter on near death experiences (NDEs) and related phenomena is dense with documented accounts and careful consideration of explanations provided by science. They conclude that we have to be open as scientists to considering that NDEs are essentially just what their experiencers think they are: a temporary separation from the body, with the possibility that a permanent separation occurs at death. And for psychology:

…the central challenge of NDEs lies in asking how these complex states of consciousness, including vivid mentation, sensory perception, and memory, can occur under conditions in which current neurophysiological models of the production of mind by brain deem such states impossible. This conflict between current neuroscientific orthodoxy and the occurrence of NDEs under conditions of general anesthesia and/or cardiac arrest is head-on, profound, and inescapable. In our opinion, no future scientific or philosophic discussion of the mind-brain problem can be fully responsible, intellectually, without taking these challenging data into account.

Edward Kelly’s final chapter on the future of psychology is well worth reading by itself. In it he discusses brain-mind ontology and the ontological implications of quantum theory (which is essentially a psychophysical theory wherein consciousness itself is intrinsic to quantum dynamics). The best part, however, is a closer look at James’s thoughts on immortality and Myers’s theory of the evolution of consciousness. I highly recommend working through the chapter to these quotes, for here we find James with his impeccable prose explaining that his brainas-transmission theory is compatible not only with the independent existence of a larger pantheistic consciousness but also with an individual, personal post-mortem survival, and moreover a suggestion of something like karma.

As for Myers, in his view of evolution, our highest human attributes—including our capacities for music, art, poetry, beauty, pure mathematics, truth, and love—are of this sort [released by our subliminal capacities, but read Higher Self], and not merely…by-

products of organic evolution itself. Myers thus conceives of evolution as having a ‘cosmical’ as well as a ‘planetary’ aspect, tending globally toward progressive release of these higher attributes….[T]his does not happen according to any present or inevitable plan, however; our evolutionary fate remains uncertain, and it is very much in our own hands. (Kelly paraphrasing Myers)

Myers’s Subliminal (Higher) Self, James on survival of the personal self, the filter/transmission model of the brain, Myers’s extraordinary views on cosmic-human evolution— the resonance with anthroposophy is breathtaking.

My reaction to this book is twofold. To an anthroposophist, the authors’ efforts to persuade readers of the falsity of the brain-causes-mind orthodoxy seem needlessly belabored. They focus almost exclusively on what is anomalous, paranormal, abnormal, unusual, and atypical. A different route for investigating experiences wherein mind (thinking) is causative and irreducible—one available to anyone with the requisite good will and earnestness—would be to study Rudolf Steiner’s epistemological works (followed by the taking up of a meditative path).

That Kelly et al. have overlooked Steiner in their open-minded, comprehensive survey of topics like consciousness, meditation, and reincarnation, a survey that has included poets and philosophers as well as writers in most spiritual traditions, is surprising. There is one brief mention of California Institute of Integral Studies, where anthroposophist Robert McDermott teaches courses covering Steiner’s work. But there is no evidence in Irreducible Mind that its authors are aware of Steiner’s spiritual science. Even brief discussion of Steiner’s spiritual psychology (the functioning and interrelationships of body, soul, and spirit) would suggest new directions for mindbody research, which is after all one hoped-for outcome of the book.

Nonetheless, my other reaction is hope. If cognitive psychiatrists with mainstream credentials want the scientific study of mystical and meditative states to become central in their field, if they are urging an enlarged theoretical framework that accepts body-free mentation and assigns autonomy and agency to mind and consciousness, then the time is ripe for anthroposophy to be heard. We may want to take the first step, or so I think, for they surely would appreciate Rudolf Steiner’s insights, which better than all the sources they’ve consulted can shed light on the riddle of matter in relation to spirit and ensure a viable future for psychology, and humanity.

Beyond Religion

The Cultural Evolution of the Sense of the Sacred from Shamanism to Religion to Post-Religious Spirituality

by William Irwin Thompson. Lindisfarne Books 2013, 89 pages

A review by Frederick J. Dennehy

One of the guilty pleasures of reading Owen Barfield is to delight in the arch manner in which he disposes of unexamined or pretentious ideas. For instance, in commenting upon the assumptions of many nineteenth century historians of myth, Barfield observes:

The remoter ancestors of Homer, we are given to understand, observing that it was darker in Winter than in Summer, immediately decided there must be some ‘cause’ for this ‘phenomenon,’ and had no difficulty in tossing off the ‘theory’ of, say, Demeter and Persephone, to account for it. A good name for this kind of banality -- the fruit, as it is, of ‘projecting post-logical thoughts back into a pre-logical age -- would perhaps be Logomorphism.’1

Further on, in speaking of philosophers and historians who equate all thinking with judging, and limit “ideas” to the products of judging, he writes:

It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that ‘Realism’, in the sense of an hypostatization of such ideas, must be merely one step further into the realm of unreality. For it is a step into the realm of shadows of shadows. Such hypostatization is today commonly attributed to, e.g., Plato, and that not only by amateurs in philosophy, but even by those who have made it their principal task to interpret him to others, and who, following Kant, regard it as a matter of course that they know what the author of Timaeus meant better than he did himself. Thus, it may be remarked… that logomorphism is always to be suspected in the writing of modern commentators, etc., upon ancient philosophy or literature…. So ubiquitous is the Königsberg ghost that it is, in my opinion, wise to assume every modern writer on every subject to be guilty of Logomorphism, unless he has actually produced some evidence of his innocence.2

1 Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, (Wesleyan University Press 1973), p. 90.

2 Id., at 196.

Barfield’s lifelong interest was the evolution of consciousness, and in the passages quoted above, besides having a great deal of fun, he acknowledges the difficulty inherent in speaking of (let alone apprehending) an older form of consciousness out of the understandings and the vocabulary of a contemporary one.

The difficulty is formidable, but not insuperable. The reality of the evolution of consciousness is a critical historical insight. We should not “pass over it in silence.” But to talk about it, we need a sensitivity to the changing nature of language, the creative truth of metaphor and the power of mythopoeia, and a strengthened capacity for imagination. And sometimes we just have to coin new words. The evolution of consciousness is also a principal theme of William Irwin Thompson’s Beyond Religion: The Cultural Evolution of the Sense of the Sacred from Shamanism to Religion to Post-Religious Spirituality. Thompson, who has read both Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield extensively, and admires them, nonetheless follows the outline of the evolution of consciousness depicted by Jean Gebser in The Ever Present Origin , which identifies the successive historical stages of consciousness as archaic, magical mythical, mental/rational, and integral .

It is difficult, if not impossible, to map Gebser’s system onto either Steiner’s or Barfield’s. “Origin,” for Gebser, is not an exclusively temporal concept, and means something more like an always present divine or spiritual reality, not unlike the Greek word “arche.” The “archaic” structure, and the “magical” structure, appear to be similar to the condition of “original participation” posited by Barfield. Gebser’s “mythic” structure is likely related to Steiner’s third post-Atlantean epoch, or “sen-

William Irwin Thompson

research & reviews

tient Soul” age and the mental/rational structure, which Gebser locates as beginning in pre-Homeric times, nonetheless appears related to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, or “Intellectual Soul” age, as well as to what Barfield calls “alpha-thinking” (with its shadow side “idolatry”).

Gebser’s “integral structure,” reintegrating the previous four structures and “concretizing the spiritual,” is “irrupting” into the mental/rational structure now. It strongly suggests the Consciousness Soul’s mission of developing the Spirit Self.

Thompson’s particular focus in this book is not so much past forms of consciousness as what he understands to be the present transition from the mental/rational structure to the integral structure. Thompson’s language dilemma is thus greater than that alluded to by Barfield, because he is attempting to describe, out of the words and thoughts of the early twentyfirst century, a form of consciousness that has not yet fully manifested itself. But, declining to lapse into the vatic silence of a Wittgenstein, Thompson chooses to work with mythopeia, imagination (Thompson is a poet), and an arsenal of neologisms in order to call up a picture of the “integral” future for his readers.

Gebser’s admonition that when an emerging structure of consciousness becomes efficient, the current structure becomes deficient, is fundamental to Thompson’s approach. The “deficiencies” of religion and its predecessors, as Thompson sees them, mean sclerosis, decay, and even reversion to evil. Thus, when religion first made its appearance in the mental/rational structure of consciousness, the previous structure of shamanism descended into sorcery, black magic, and human sacrifice. Similarly, as religion is being replaced by postreligious spirituality, we see not only the rampant child abuse, conspicuous wealth, and entrenched hierarchy in the Catholic Church, but a more general dislocation in all organized religions. Fear of what is emerging prompts a scurrying to the comforts of the past, manifesting in (an often violent) fundamentalism. Because he understands fundamentalism in a universal sense to be a degradation of metaphor into code, Thompson sees the linear reduc-

tionism of socio-biologists and eliminativists like Richard Dawkins and Patricia Churchland as its secular subspecies, and a prime example of the sclerosis and decay of the creative endeavors that characterized the flourishing of science at the height of the mental/rationalist structure of consciousness. Thompson’s perception of Jerry Falwell and Richard Dawkins as two sides of the same coin is illuminating.

Beyond Religion is a compilation of six essays that Thompson originally published in the web literary magazine, Wild River Review. This stitching together may account for its somewhat disjointed presentation.3 The first chapter focuses upon child abuse in the Catholic Church, and suggests that the recent scandals are a direct result of a fear and hatred of women, made institutionally permanent during the papacy of Pius IX in the mid-nineteenth century—again, a mental/rationalist structure deficiency come to the fore in the face of emerging spirituality. But Thompson places it in a larger context:

Once Isis and Osiris was the religion of a Magnus annus in the zodiacal precession of the equinox, then it was Jesus and Mary for the age of Pisces. Now in this new millennium we are experiencing the cultural evolution from religion to a personal spirituality in which the unique mind learns how to immerse itself in the Universal Mind through a process of meditation: no churches, mosques, or temples needed.

The remaining chapters treat the development from shamanism to religion to post-religious spirituality, and preview Thompson’s vision of a society of “integral consciousness,” which he believes will consist of a “fellowship of inspirited minds” rather than a hierarchy of leaders and followers. Thompson sees adumbrations of this new spirituality in the “initiatic consort” relationship that obtained between Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa (the Mother) in the ashram in Auroville. Neither one, Thompson says, tried to be a guru or a charismatic leader, but both wished to be realized as a divinized couple. Tantric practices engender Illumination through what he terms the “etheric body” with its elevation of kundalini; Enlightenment, on the other hand, involves higher and more subtle bodies, what Aurobindo called the “Descent of the Supramental,” or the “wisdom heart of universal compassion.” Thompson devotes a considerable part of his text to his imagination, derived from Aurobindo and the Mother, of the

3 A comprehensive background to Thomson’s ideas and assumptions in this book may be found in Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996).

development from tantric yoga to integral yoga and the changing sexual and spiritual relationship it will entail.

Thompson’s “Conclusion” is dedicated to his projection of what the new “planetary culture” of the integral structure of consciousness may look like. It presents an imagination of a new space, a new time, a new sexuality, a new ecology, and a new relationship between machines and human beings, entailing nanotechnology, higher dimensionality, and symbiotic consciousness with both elemental realms and celestial intelligences. Everyone will find this imagination challenging; many will find it impenetrable.

Readers will have to judge for themselves the extent to which Thompson’s understanding of the evolution of consciousness coincides with and departs from those of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield. While Thompson perpetuates at times the familiar Darwinian sketch of an exclusively upward evolution of hominids, his (and Gebser’s) understanding that the evolution of consciousness continually incorporates the latent aspects of previous stages is similar to Rudolf Steiner’s exposition of the recapitulation of old planetary stages of consciousness in the epochs of the post-Atlantean age, and his sense of a fundamental purposiveness of evolution in the hoped for return, in a higher key, to “origin,” is fundamental to anthroposophy. Thompson is not an anthroposophist, but a thinker in deep sympathy with its principles, and one bold enough to try to concretize, out of his imaginative understanding of evolving consciousness, the kinds of futures to which we may be exposed and from which we may have to choose.

The Section for the Social Sciences in North America

The Section for the Social Sciences in North America is teeming with the activities of members busy in the world and with a consciousness informed by the work of Rudolf Steiner and the School for Spiritual Science. Section members are to be found working on racial consciousness, helping death row inmates, revitalizing dying cities, practicing psychotherapy, participating in co-housing communities, working with young, poor, single mothers and their children, doing good work in Camphill communities and Waldorf schools, working in conflict resolution and peace activities, and so on. And these are only a few of the ways in which the Section is active in the world!

In support of members and their work, a Collegium of six meets twice yearly in different geographic areas. These travels allow us to meet with colleagues in the Section, in the School for Spiritual Science, and in the local Society. Where clusters of Section members are to be found (such as Harlemville and San Francisco) local members meet regularly; in some areas (such as Montréal) one or more Section members meet regularly with interested friends.

We are currently represented in the North American Collegium of the School by Peter Buckbee. A twice-yearly newsletter, available to friends on request (to Kristen Puckett at kristen.puckett@gmail.com), allows geographically scattered members an opportunity to share thoughts, research, and collaboration on social issues.

As a Section we support the Anthroposophical Societies in America and in Canada. Collegium members faithfully attend the annual meeting and conference of the U.S. Society, where the Section has offered workshops and presentations on healthy social forms during the weekend. Such opportunities for informal meetings with fellow members and friends of the Section are golden.

As a Section and as individuals, we are deeply interested in social events in the big, wide world and close to home—signs of the times are clear in both!

We welcome interest in the Section and its work.

The Collegium of the Section for the Social Sciences: Peter Buckbee (pbuckbee@gmail.com)

Meg Gorman (pelicanmeg@earthlink.net)

Kristen Puckett (kristen.puckett@gmail.com)

Denis Schneider (dschneider@sympatico.ca)

Claus Sproll (claus@sproll.net)

Shawn Sullivan (shawngustav@hotmail.com)

“Wise Old King” by Larry Young

news for members & friends of the Anthroposophical Society in America

New Weekend Retreat Series

The Anthroposophical Society in America announces the first of an ongoing series of weekend retreats to discuss:

The Life, Nature, and Cultivation of Anthroposophy on September 19-21, 2014, at Rudolf Steiner House, 1923 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Anthroposophy should lead from waking life, not to a dreaming, but to a more intense awakening. In everyday life we have community indeed, but it is confined within narrow limits. We are banished to a certain fragment of existence, and only in our inner hearts we bear a longing for life’s fullness…we must turn away from the world of the senses to the reality of the Spirit to find the true sources of humanity where the soul can experience the fullness of community it needs. — From “Letter to the Members” VII Branches and those engaged in working groups (study and interest groups) are warmly encouraged to send representatives to this important exploration of ways in which the work of anthroposophical study and anthroposophical community building may be strengthened and enlivened. Enrollment is limited to forty participants.

Frederick Amrine, Marian León, and Nathaniel Williams have organized the program and will guide the retreat, which takes as its focal point Rudolf Steiner’s first series of “Letters to the Members,” collected and available in the booklet entitled The Life, Nature, and Cultivation of Anthroposophy. Participants are asked to study these letters carefully before arriving and to engage them actively during the retreat.

An additional text to inform our discussions, and one that the General Council is currently working with, is taken from the lecture of June 15, 1915, entitled “How Anthroposophical Groups Prepare for the Sixth Epoch; Community Above Us, Christ in Us.” This lecture will also help shape this year’s annual meeting and conference, October 10–12 at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA. (A new translation by Frederick Amrine of part of this lecture can be found at the end of this issue.)

The organizers envision this retreat becoming a recurring event, ideally every year on the third weekend of September. The specific content will vary, but the overarching theme will remain the same: an invitation to continued striving for renewal of the life of groups and branches within the Anthroposophical Society.

Detailed information will be distributed to the Society’s group and branch list. Please direct questions to Marian León at (marian@anthroposophy.org or 734.662.9355) at the Society’s office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Webinars: Engaging New Images of the Zodiac

The Anthroposophical Society in America is offering a series of four recorded webinars with Mary Stewart Adams. For the year 1912-1913, Rudolf Steiner oversaw the publication of a new calendar that was intended to be a creative impulse for living a spiritual life. The Calendar of the Soul was composed of three essential elements which included: the well-known soul verses; daily name and feast days; and new images for the Sun, Moon, and zodiac.

Rudolf Steiner worked with artist Imma von Eckardstein to develop these new images with the intent that they support calendar users in becoming aware of the waking and sleeping rhythms of certain elemental forces throughout the course of the year. This was undertaken in order to address the understanding that the ancient, traditional images, or glyphs, of the zodiac had long since ceased to support wakeful, creative life forces in man.

The Stuttgart artist Margot Rossler furthered the work with these new images, and in the 1950s created a set of glass etchings depicting the images. These images are displayed in the foyer of the Rudolf Steiner House in Ann Arbor.

Through this webinar series, Mary Stewart Adams will explain the historical context in which the new images appeared; how they can be understood as a transition from the old forms to the new; and their meaning in form and color relative to the cycle of the year, each year. Two programs, an introduction and focused look at the Spring images of Pisces, Aries, and Taurus, and one on the Summer constellations Gemini, Cancer, Leo, are available online now. (Follow the link on the right side of our home page at www.anthroposophy.org.) Autumn and Winter webinars will be posted in October and December.

Mary Stewart Adams is a star lore historian, storyteller and author who has been immersed in the history of star knowledge for nearly 30 years. She is a member of the School for Spiritual Science, and a researcher in astrosophy; her work with these new images began in the 1990s. Mary led the initiative that resulted in International Dark Sky Park designation for the Headlands property in Michigan’s Emmet County which later resulted in state legislation to protect the night sky over an additional 23,000 acres of state park and forest land. Mary makes her home under the starry skies of Harbor Springs, Michigan.

Rudolf Steiner House, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Building Culture and Infrastructure

It has been an eventful and exciting seven months since I started as director of development for the Society. We are striving to create a culture and infrastructure to support increased fundraising and long-term financial stability for our organization. Abundant resources allow our intentions to manifest more fully into the world.

My focus has been on increasing my knowledge about the Society and its members, and building an active and healthy development effort to support the immediate and future goals of the Society.

In the spring, I sent a survey around to gain a sense of what is important to us individually and collectively, and what we see as the potential and the impact of our Society, now and into the future. The response was enormous! Over 800 people took the time to reply, and I am grateful to everyone for sharing their thoughts and perspectives. In describing ourselves, the most frequent responses were interested in inner development, interested in social change, and ecologically minded. That’s not such a big

surprise, but what’s also interesting to note is the incredible range of professions and interests beyond those common themes. We are a wonderfully diverse group of individuals, with a shared interest in furthering the work and insight of Rudolf Steiner as a resource for powerful and positive change in the world.

And how should the Society pursue this important work? The importance of both inner and outer work arises again and again. Tools and resources for inner growth, as well as opportunities to connect with one another, and support for initiatives that make a direct impact on the world are all high priorities for our members and for the work of the Society itself.

I’ve also been blessed to be able to connect with many of you through phone conversations, email, and personal meetings. I continue to be inspired by the interesting and active community of members, as well as the many different ways we are weaving anthroposophy into our public and private lives.

There are many ways we can all help. First of all, as a membership organization, your membership contribution and participation is vital. A warm thank you to all our members. If you are not a current member but would like to become one, please visit the membership section of our website at anthroposophy.org.

Second, we rely on gifts, both unrestricted and for specific purposes. The Michael Support Circle is the Anthroposophical Society’s major gift initiative, which was founded in 2009 by Ernst Katz and Torin Finser. Members make a multi-year commitment of unrestricted giving at a level of $1000 per year or more. This

“A Second Classroom: Parent-Teacher Relationships in a Waldorf School”

The latest book by Anthroposophical Society in America General Secretary Torin Finser provided a perfect point of reference (its title is the headline above) for meetings in April and May around the country: Conway, NH, Santa Barbara, CA, St. Paul, MN, Miami, FL, and Pittsburgh, PA (where these pictures were taken).

Torin heads the Department of Education at Antioch University New England, has served on the board of six Waldorf schools, and has former students teaching in schools across the country. In the picture at right he is standing with former students, now teachers at the Waldorf School of Pittsburgh.

Also noteworthy is the economy and resonance of the two words written on the whiteboard (center)—“equality” and “expertise”—when juxtaposed with outlines of Rudolf Steiner’s First Goetheanum building with its overlapping twin domes.

Deb Abrahams-Dematte

high level of giving, along with the multi-year commitment, has provided stability for the Society as well as the opportunity for growth over time. The Michael Support Circle currently has 57 members and is growing. If you are interested in becoming part of this visionary and generous group, or would like to learn more, please contact me for more information. Many thanks to those of you who are original, continuing, or new members of the Michael Support Circle.

Legacy giving is and has been another important source of financial support for the Society. It offers the opportunity to make a gift which brings expression to a person’s intention and love for anthroposophy into the future. Over the years, the Society has been fortunate to receive bequests from members who have crossed the threshold. In 2013, we received $210,000 in total bequests from 2 individuals. We are very grateful to them and their families. Planned giving, including bequests, gifts of retirement accounts, insurance policies, and appreciated assets are practical ways which members can continue their karmic relationship with the Society and bring expression to their intention and love for anthroposophy.

In order for the Society to be vibrant and sustainable, we need the help and participation of all members in a multitude of ways. Thank you for your efforts in supporting this essential work.

--Deb Abrahams-Dematte, Director of Development deb@anthroposophy.org

Summertime Work/Study in the Library

We’re really into the swing of things at the Rudolf Steiner Library! The task to clean and repair the entire 36,000 item collection is momentous, but it’s feeling a little less overwhelming and a lot more fun. Our transition space, an old church in Philmont, NY, is beautiful to be in. It is nestled in the Berkshire hills and is only half a block away from a reservoir and park, and we’re supported by an active and diverse anthroposophic community.

Support for this effort is growing—we’ve hired some temporary student workers for the summer and our volunteer group is growing. Besides our regular weekly corps of volunteers, we also host bi-weekly work parties where a group comes together for four hours to work on the books and then share a meal, prepared in our own kitchen. There’s movement on the ground and excitement in the air!

That said, whether we’ll find the help to get all the work done, as well as the enthusiasm and vision to co-create the next phase of the library, is still a question. This summer is our big push, with three work weeks we hope you’ve read about online. We’re inviting you to join us for (why not rent a van and come out with some friends for a library vacation)… a “libra-cation”?

In addition to working with the largest collection of anthroposophic literature in English found anywhere in the world, the weeks are also providing an opportunity to contemplate specific themes with others. June 16-20, “Tombs or Seeds?” Working with the dual nature of books. June 30–July 5, “The Spirit of Non-

Violent Transformation,” a Youth Section work camp exploring the role of conscience and creativity in taking up our cultural heritage. And August 18–22, “Sharing Our Stories,” understanding our personal biography in the light of the anthroposophical movement’s biography.

This is an important time in the life of the library. As anthroposophy steps into a new stage of service, the library can become a renewed resource for the whole community. For the library to grow into this space, and thereby help grow the anthroposophical movement, we will need everyone’s good ideas, good will and helping hands. If you can’t join us this summer but would like to become engaged, please connect! Stop by if you’re in the area, drop in and help out for a few hours, or send us an email with your thoughts and ideas. Every ounce of support is of use! Thanks!

Seth Jordan, Transition Manager

To See Ourselves Through the Eyes of Friends

The second visit of our friends Joan Treadaway, Daniel Bittleston, and Linda Connell from the Western Regional Council to Boulder, Colorado coincided with Whitsun 2013. This most forward looking and central of festivals in our practice of anthroposophy can become a source of quiet confidence, strength and hope as we seek to find and sustain, both individually and in community, that center which can hold.

The gathering opened with Glenda Monasch welcoming us all and introducing Joan, Daniel, and Linda. Joan then spoke the verse that expresses so beautifully how we can now hear the Morning Call of Michael. Each of the three friends expressed in their own way how they had come to listen and learn and get to know what was living here in our community; that this gathering was an opportunity to see and recognize one another with interest. This came to expression in a wonderful ceremonial greeting of one another, when Glenda led us in a eurythmic EVOE with the words from the Whitsun/Pentecost text in Acts 2:1. Through eurythmically meeting and individually greeting one to another, we had the opportunity to connect with the higher being in each other, and from this we entered into the spirit of speaking and listening with one another. The caring, respect, and interest with which we were met and listened to by the WRC and each other was heartwarming and encouraging.

Several of us relayed how there were numerous strong initiatives here in Boulder, including four Waldorf schools, a rich eurythmy training with many public offerings, various BD practi-

A notable tome from the restoration work, Steiner’s The Anthroposophic Movement (1923)

tioners, several strong study groups and a consistent celebrating of All Souls and the Holy Nights, among others. It also became apparent that there was something important missing for many of us here in Boulder. This could perhaps be best expressed by saying that while there is a plethora of creative and important activities, what is missing is a strong and vital center that provides common ground and nourishment. It also became clear that some of the various offerings were compromised by inconsistent participation. Questions arose as to how we could better meet the needs of members and interested friends.

It became clear that both on the WRC and in our community individuals bring differing ways of practicing anthroposophy. It was also apparent that there was often a mutual appreciation of and respect for these differences. The opportunity to cultivate the common ground and to find unity in our diversity was recognized as important and, as our conversation deepened, many of us came to see this potential in our community with a both joyful and grounded optimism. Some of us came to feel that perhaps we could and will develop new forms in which to be, celebrate and work together; new ways to encourage each other to do our work in the world and to deepen our practices. Daniel spoke of how he was feeling the importance of awe and how we might find ways to develop this quality in our being together.

I was reminded of a gathering held in Boulder many years ago, where Arthur Zajonc shared his sense that our society would change radically in the near future, to the point that we would likely not easily recognize it in its new forms. Do we not, especially now, find ourselves in the process of a necessary metamorphosis of this kind, where old forms, that can easily become wooden, need to be re-enlivened? Perhaps it is up to us to be open to and confident in the possibility that we will be guided, by our selfless love for the spirit of anthroposophy, in our quest for developing new and healthy forms of coming together that are also in sync with our traditions. Perhaps this will allow us to radiate something of the light and warmth that we have found coming alive in ourselves and between us, in a way that becomes apparent to friends who take interest in who we are and what we are living and doing.

In looking back several years, to the previous WRC visit, it has become clear that we have been moving in the right direction. At that time, the theme had resounded that the cultivation of love was important in our endeavors to come together, and I think most of us can say that we have made progress in this realm.

Now, as we concluded our conversation, many of us had a sense that something significant was again beginning to shift; we felt and expressed a sense of optimism for the evolving fruitfulness of our work here in Boulder. On that note, we concluded our conversation and moved on to a delicious dinner with numerous engaged smaller conversations. That evening many more friends from the community joined us to hear Linda give an inspired and beautifully clear overview of the impulse of the Buddha.

We are grateful to Joan, Daniel and Linda for visiting our Boulder community and being with us on this Whitsun weekend. The genuine interest and caring with which they witnessed the joys and growing pains of our anthroposophical community and our

endeavors was apparent. Sometimes simply coming together with friends and engaging them by way of a selfless and heartfelt listening can clarify and facilitate the change that is in the air and asking to be made manifest. This was one of those inspiring experiences. Now it is up to us to do the work.

Tom Altgelt Boulder, Colorado

Editor’s Note: this report from 2013 was misplaced, but its sentiments and experiences relate closely to themes raised by Rudolf Steiner in the lecture on anthroposophic group life and purposes reprinted in part at the end of this issue (p.61).

Central Regional Meeting

The Central Regional Council held its annual planning meeting in the magical setting of The Headlands International Dark Sky Park in Emmet County, Michigan, from Sunday, June 1st through Wednesday June 4th. The gathering was accompanied by sunbeams on the lake by day and starbeams and moonbeams by night. Throughout the retreat, we enjoyed excellent meals provided by Bliss Gardens Farm, a Northern Michigan biodynamic initiative. It was the perfect setting for the commencement of our project, “Speaking with the Stars.”

We were guided in our journey by astrosophist, Mary Stewart Adams who reminded us that we are at the beginning of very auspicious cosmic activity. We grappled with the question, “how can a community of individuals informed by anthroposophy engage in activity that is both informed by the current celestial gesture and by their shared ideas with one another?” This is being carried as a research question which the Central Region is undertaking as we move through the eclipse seasons of 2014 and 2015. Across these two years there will be four successive total lunar eclipses (called a tetrad), and one total solar eclipse (not visible in North America), each occurring near the sacred festival times at spring and fall equinox.

We were kept grounded in our work by eurythmist, Marianne Else, under whose guidance we were immersed in social eurythmy, and the movements of the seven-pointed star which opened

Headlands International Dark Sky Park, Emmet County, Michigan

toward the future. This became a focal point for our work together. Festivals coordinator, Hazel Archer-Ginsberg also assisted with grounding exercises and our hearts were made joyful through the “Songtrails” led by Marianne Fieber with Dennis Dietzel. Our guides, Alberto Loya and Mary Louise Hershberger, held the space for our activities and David Howerton led us in imaginative contemplation.

Out of our nebulaic activity several initiatives were birthed to take back to our respective communities. Some of these included a greater web presence that would begin to archive materials and provide an open forum for ongoing dialog amongst ourselves, social eurythmy, and contemplation/observation of the night sky. Mary stressed the relational nature of our contemplative activity. The stars are not fixed beings as we tend to think of them but evolving beings that, like the rest of the living world, are eternally creative. In a Goethean sense, the conscious direction of our will forces toward communion with the stars opens a portal for a process of co-becoming with them. We were left with a deep appreciation for our responsibility for engaging with the stars.

For more about Mary’s work, visit www.fairytalemoons.com, find her on Facebook (facebook.com/starmare.adams) or email her at starmare.adams@gmail.com. And see the first page of this section for information on her webinar. For more information on “Speaking with the Stars” and to access all issues of the CRC e-Correspondence, visit www.anthroposophy.org and under “Groups & Branches” select “Central Region.”

Cheryl Lawler

St. Louis, Missouri

The Anthroposophical Society in Ireland: 25th Anniversary

On May 30–June 1 members of the Anthroposophical Society in Ireland celebrated its 25th anniversary. My husband, Philip Mees, and I were lucky enough to be there at the end of our vacation. The members came together in a small town north of Dublin, Drogheda, where the taxi drivers knew everyone in town and after two days they knew us too.

The conference was held on the Millmount in an area where a museum is located. Over 50 people attended. That is a lot for a society that numbers less than 200 people. Both Ireland and Northern Ireland come together in this society. There are no local branches, just study groups.

The Irish Society is too small to have a General Secretary. Instead they have a Country Representative, David Fairclough, who was confirmed on Saturday morning at their Annual General Meeting. The members we met were mostly from Camphill com-

munities. There are 18 larger and smaller communities in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Waldorf Schools seemed less evident. And if a school becomes a national school the teachers are required to speak Irish—not a simple task! Virginia Sease came as representative of the Executive in Dornach. She had been present at the Society’s founding. She was a speaker at the conference along with Thomas Meyer and Christopher Budd.

The conference began Friday evening with a performance of speech eurythmy. The ensemble performed The Triune of Grace, the prelude to The Portal of Initiation, selections from The Soul Calendar, and the Song of Amergin, an ancient Irish bard. Amergin’s verse was very appropriate there as Amergin is said to be buried under the Millmount.

The Triune of Grace

As it was O Thou, O Thou, As it is Triune of Grace Triune of Grace

As it shall be With the ebb With the ebb Evermore; With the flow; With the flow.

Thomas Meyer’s theme was “Rudolf Steiner and D.N. Dunlop.” We were touched to hear that May 30 was the anniversary of D.N. Dunlop’s death; Thomas Meyer brought him very close to us in the description of his life. The Annual General Meeting on Saturday morning was followed by Virginia Sease’s lecture on “The Exoteric/Esoteric Significance of Membership in the Anthroposophical Society.” She spoke of how Rudolf Steiner had united his destiny with the Anthroposophical Society; he made a vow to the spiritual world, the Society is part of his karma.

We adjourned with lunch sacks and were offered rides to the next event—a visit to the ancient site of Knowth. It is a lovely setting in a river valley. The sites there are 5,000 years old, older than the pyramids. We had seen the neighboring site of Newgrange and entered it two weeks earlier. Newgrange and Knowth are ancient passage tombs. One feels the ancient mysteries very near in such places. It is not possible to enter Knowth at this time but the inside is lit and one can look down its long passageway. Around the mound are huge ancient boulders with simple but beautiful carvings—sun circles, waves, and many other designs. The hour that is permitted for the visit is all too brief.

Christopher Budd spoke in the late afternoon on “In the Steps of Dunlop; Modern Finance and the Hibernian Mysteries.” He spoke about aspects of finance, such as double-entry bookkeeping, as pure spirit. He asked if taking up economics in the right way is a task of the West. He showed us how economics in the world today is three-fold, although it is not recognized. He gave the advice to anthroposophists when they work in the world with many different people, as he does regularly, not to answer questions that were not asked.

A festive meal together and another talk by Thomas Meyer on Dunlop and we had to go—we were preparing to return to California. We were grateful to have met these human beings who are striving to work with anthroposophy as we are. Congratulations to the members of the Anthroposophical Society in Ireland.

Linda Connell Glendale, California

Central Region Representatives

Paul W. Scharff

August 5, 1930–April 29, 2014

To review the remarkable life and work of Paul Scharff of the Fellowship Community we offer several perspectives. There are his own words, a 2006 interview with Michael Ronall for The Listener (p.36). Below are remembrances from his wife and colleague Ann, from former co-workers at the Community Kathleen Wright and Harold Bush, and from Claus Sproll. All have been edited. –Editor

A Thread of Light

by Ann Scharff

Rudolf Steiner tells how spiritual beings wishing to incarnate onto the earth bring individuals together who will be the parents. And so it was that Georgiana De Jong and Fritz Scharff were destined to meet on the North Sea in a cattle boat going over the English Channel at which time Georgiana was chastising the captain for his mistreatment of the horses he was carrying. This spritely, determined voice sparked an interest in Fritz Scharff and this began their future life together.

Georgia was born and raised in midwest America in Iowa. She learned and mastered many aspects of the work on the farm where they lived. The greatest influence in her early life was the untimely death of her sister that led her to her mission of becoming a doctor. She entered medical school as the only woman physician in her class at a time when women physicians were rare or unknown. She then entered into a life of service, going to Kentucky to serve in a small mission hospital, spending many of her hours riding horseback from village to village or to single homes in the hills of Kentucky tending the poor and the needy. She sought further education and took leave to go to Vienna to study pediatrics.

Fritz was born in Vienna and received his higher educational experiences at the Technical University in Vienna. His life there had given him a rich cultural heritage. During the First World War he was taught ballistics by Walter Johannes Stein, later one of the early Waldorf School teachers, who gave Fritz Occult Science to read. When the first reading didn’t touch him

sufficiently, Stein gave it back and told him to read it again. Fritz became a dedicated student in his pursuit of anthroposophy. Important in his life was the death of his brother who was killed during the war.

This couple pursued their life together back in the hills of Kentucky where Fritz worked in Churchill Weavers, an organization dedicated to bringing weaving as a home industry movement to these mountain people. Ultimately they moved to Lorain, Ohio, a town on the shores of Lake Erie, where at least a quarter of the popu-

the unfolding of the future life work of Margaret Deussen, a musician graduating from the Conservatory of Music in Berlin. She worked with Dr. Otto Palmer, the first anthroposophical doctor in Germany, and she became very active in anthroposophy and participated in the effort to bring the Threefold Social Order to Germany. Later in Dornach she took up curative education and eurythmy. She accompanied Carl back to the U.S. and became a member of the household. Her interests and experiences were major influences in Paul’s life.

When Paul was thirteen, he asked to have a normal brother within their home; the social relationships of another young person seemed an important experience for him. The county orphanage fulfilled this wish and Joe Selmants came to be a member of the Scharff family.

lation came from all over the world, many employed in the large U.S. Steel plant. During depression times, Fritz was able to find work as a laborer there as well. Georgia established a medical practice in their home.

Their first child, Carl, was then born, a child who was to carry his destiny as an uncontrolled epileptic for 56 years. Two years later, their second child, Paul, was born. As Carl’s illness picture became clear, neither parent would consider institutionalization. With this, the needs of this child started to unfold what became a small community of people to build a life commensurate with his needs. This included a two-year period for him living at the Sonnenhoef in Arlesheim, Switzerland, after which time he was ready to return to America. To prepare for this, the Scharffs moved to a farm near Lorain in Amherst, Ohio, located on Oberlin Road. Oberlin College was at the other end of the road. A second factor was

Paul was growing up, participating in farm activities relating to the animals, fields, orchard and gardens, all that we know in our lives here at the Fellowship Community. These were intimate and vital experiences for him all of which laid a foundation for our work here. This included toting around his mother’s black bag as he joined her on house calls to see her ailing patients. It also included setting up a little wood shop in the old coal room when they no longer needed coal for stoking the furnace. This was the beginning of the wood shop and the many building needs here over the years. During these early years, he and his brother shared the same bedroom; living with an individual with epilepsy was an integral part of his life. Seizures in the middle of the night were not uncommon. The anguish and torment of the epileptic before a seizure could be experienced sometimes for days prior to a seizure. Then came the seizure and for Paul this was followed by an aura of light, living light, a guiding light of such magnitude that it has been and will continue to be a guiding light for the evolution of this community. Those here over the years know how individuals with epilepsy have played a significant role.

Some life shaping events

Six years old: a visit to the farm from Ehrenfried Pfeiffer to advise the Scharffs and Margaret Deussen on various aspects of the care of their farm, including making

Paul Scharff, MD

for members & friends

preparations together. A rich cultural heritage surrounded him; Oberlin Conservatory students joined in. Music camp.

Early school years: considered a dumbling, the teacher asking his mother to withdraw him because he would never learn. Grade 1: the blacksmith shop outside the window of his first grade class was of great interest. – The community school housed all twelve grades. The janitor, Carl Schifferstein, was at the door greeting each as they entered and left for the day. For Paul this individual was like an angelic being tending the school. He wished to be a janitor.

Twelve-thirteen years old: a life-long question posed by the superintendent, Mr. Powers, who placed 3 + 4 = 7 on the blackboard and then asked the class what happened with the plus and equals. No answer. This question was pursued by Paul for years. – This was an awakening time. Upon graduation, a teacher said, “We loved you, but never understood you.”

College at Oberlin: very intense and difficult. There were many pre-med students but only seventeen graduated having fulfilled the requirements. Paul developed significant problems with ulcers over that time; stress and need for very hard work was great. Illness was a constant life companion starting in his teens.

I too was a student at Oberlin. Toward the end of Paul’s senior year, there was a meeting of students in Finney Chapel. Paul saw me at a distance and recognized our relationship. This was confirmed in a dream that night. He found me in the library the following morning. I knew that I had just met the man whom I would marry.

In autumn of that year, 1952, Paul started four years in Western Reserve Medical School. It did not take him long to learn that independent thinking and ideas contrary to the established thinking were not acceptable. He was early on called into the Dean’s office and told that he was there to learn what was being taught otherwise he would be asked to leave the school. – Studies in anthroposophy were a daily part of his work, the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity a continual challenge. With a physician, Dr. George Deutsch, we also studied lectures on education and on the Gospels. – Following medical school a year’s internship in Cooperstown, NY, followed by

two years of military service in the Public Health and then our move to Spring Valley.

Service time: Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland. Already at this time a strong recognition that with these laws, patient care would not be the emphasis, but procedures with minimum time for talking to patients. What would that mean for individuals in the future? A view of the care of the aging came as a huge question. – Our first child, Christopher, was born. – A further year in Public Health was spent in West Virginia, in charge of the hospital in the only Federal Women’s Penitentiary. Industrialization of medicine and proceduredriven therapeutics was already growing.

A look into the future brought us to Spring Valley in 1959. – The work ahead included eight more years of residency training in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry. For Paul this was necessary in order to work medically with both illnesses of the physical body and illnesses of the soul. – It brought a renewed connection with Ehrenfried Pfeiffer and the esoteric impulses with which he strove. Pfeiffer shared Rudolf Steiner’s concern that human anatomy and physiology would be crucial for a deeper understanding of anthroposophy, a challenge and task that Paul strove to take up and work with.

Michael, our second child, was born celebrating our arrival into the Threefold Community, followed in 1961 by Katherine’s birth when her grandparents, her uncle Carl, and Miss Deussen moved from Lorain to join us. 1961 was also the year Nancy Laughlin, neighbor and philanthropist called in October with her urgent and formative question to Paul: “What can we do with the Monges property?” [See details on p.36ff.]

Guiding Experiences

Knowing from his brother the 24/7 care needs of individuals. — Concerns in the care of the aging. — Regimen of established institutions as in medical school. — Procedure-driven medical care. — Neglect of care needs because of skeletal weekend and holiday staffing. — Very little interest in the problems of aging; no sense for a coming crisis in our society and the world. — Insights of Rudolf Steiner for all ages.

Birthing pains

Need for a humanly concerned lawyer: Max Mason. — Town of Ramapo: needing variance in zoning laws to build; finally approved as “An Experiment in Long Term Care.” — Building plans: who could help to get started? The care of old people was not popular. — Liesel and Willi Ringwald: guided in their decision to come help by the early death of their daughter. — Guidance of the living by the dead in future community building. — Dedication of the Fellowship Community, July 3, 1966. — Birth of John, our last child.

[Contributions below and the interview p.36 describe Paul’s work in anthroposophy, medicine, legal-political and rights areas.] These are just a few thoughts about our nearly 48 years of the Fellowship Community. Many [at this memorial service] will have shared in this. Each can bring another part of the whole story. Paul’s dedicated work together with hundreds of others and his intense, active life will stand as a living reality to grow into the future with those here now and those who will come to join into this evolving endeavor.

From The Sophia Sun

by Kathleen Wright

Paul Scharff’s death came as a shock, not because I was unaware that he had had lymphoma since 2000, but because he was such a Giant of Will Forces, that I thought he should live to be at least 100! To just about every anthroposophist in America Paul is known for being the founder of the amazing Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge, NY. I happened to be a co-worker there for three years, many years ago, and Paul was my “sponsor” for joining the Anthroposophical Society (a practice that is no longer required) exactly thirty years ago. I would like to share some of my memories of him as a tribute.

When I first met Dr. Scharff in 1982, I was very touched by how he managed to find the time to try to get to know new co-workers and to help them adjust to life at the Fellowship, which was by no means easy. To the outside world, it may have looked like “the best place on earth to live and die” as one New York newspaper characterized it, but living in community

can at times be the “worst” place to live as well. Paul told me that the average coworker lasted just eighteen months.

One time shortly after I arrived, I had gone to him in tears because I had heard that someone had said a disparaging thing about me. He cheered me up by saying, “If you think it’s bad what they are saying about you, look what they are saying about me!” I had to laugh because it was true what he said of himself. It seems that just about every person of charismatic stature acquires as many critics as admirers. (Look at how the members tortured dear Ita Wegman!)

Paul shared with me many spiritual conversations that I have never forgotten. One time, after I had complained about the obnoxious behavior of a very prominent anthroposophist, he asked me if I knew the difference between the individuality and the personality. He told me that the individuality is one’s ego, that lasts from life to life, but that the personality is what manifests on the outside due to the hereditary forces. It evidences in one’s temperament, and is often chosen by the individuality to fulfill his/her destiny. Often one needs characteristics that sympathetic idealists may perceive as harsh in order to accomplish great deeds. He gave as an example Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, who had great difficulty in personal relationships and was despised by many. Yet, Paul said, this man spoke with the angels; he accomplished incredible deeds. Rudolf Steiner had such faith in him that when Pfeiffer was a very young man, he gave him a long list of things he must do every day. When Pfeiffer replied that there aren’t enough hours in a day to do all that Steiner asked of him, Steiner told him he needed to learn to do without sleep and he actually gave him exercises to help him accomplish that. Later on it occurred to me that what Paul said of Pfeiffer could be applied to himself, for Paul Scharff was indeed a mighty Individuality, yet many experienced his personality as difficult. Though he never said it, I felt that the motto of his personality was: “Whatever doesn’t kill you strengthens you… No rest for the weary!” However, he never asked of co-workers anything he hadn’t been doing himself his whole life long. In spite of ter-

rible physical suffering (ulcers, pernicious anemia, and eventually lymphoma), frequent inner turmoil, and constant outer conflicts, Paul accomplished amazing deeds, and that is a gift for the angels and a boon for one’s soul development.

What was it that formed Paul’s personality? I had a wonderful conversation with Paul’s father, Fritz Scharff, who was a patient or “member” at the Fellowship and passed away during the time I was there. I had a special fondness for Fritz because like my own grandfather he was from Vienna, and we shared a love of Wagner’s operas. Although he had never met Rudolf Steiner, Fritz had the privilege of serving under Walter Johannes Stein, who asked Fritz to read Occult Science and report back in a week about what he thought of it. After reading the book, Fritz replied: “I am sorry, Sir, but it goes against everything I have been taught and believe.” So Stein said: ‘Read it again!” This same ritual occurred three times and finally Scharff said, “It’s starting to make sense. Do you have any more books by this Steiner?” And so began a lifetime of devotion to anthroposophy, passed on to his son Paul.

Fritz also told me of how he met his wife, Georgiana... Their first child was a boy named Carl who had severe epilepsy all his life. Like Fritz, Carl was a patient at the Fellowship when I arrived, and he passed away at 56, shortly before I left.

Paul described his mother to me as a “strict disciplinarian” and as incredibly devoted to her many patients. From her Paul received his incredible energy and drive to perfection, his stubbornness, his tenacity, and his veritable mission in life. While Paul had many reasons for founding the Fellowship Community including his friendship with Dr. Linder, the first anthroposophic physician in America, it was Paul’s mother’s contracting polio and his

brother’s crippling epilepsy that eventually led Paul to realize this was his destiny. Georgiana and Carl were among the first members at the Fellowship....

The Scharffs arrived in 1959 in the part of Spring Valley, New York now called Chestnut Ridge. The Fellowship Community opened in 1966. Today approximately 70 elderly members and 60 co-workers and their children reside there. It has grown immensely over the years, adding land, animals, buildings, and tasks. There are a number of cottage industries including a printing house (Mercury Press), candlemaking shop, weavery, dairy, woodworking shop, and the Otto Specht School, an education program for mentally and emotionally handicapped children. A small store called Hand and Hoe sells the Fellowship’s products.

Dr. Scharff insisted from the very beginning that every co-worker should have a variety of work experience. No one should have to spend all day indoors in the hospital wing, nor all day outdoors in the fields. Artistic work should also be part of one’s work experience. One recalls Paul’s own childhood—lessons in violin, voice, and piano, farm work, gardening, household chores, school, going with his Mother to see patients. A true Renaissance man, Paul wanted others to experience such a life as well. The Fellowship also held delightful festivals for its members and children and there were innumerable study groups.

In addition to founding the Fellowship Community and holding all its members in his consciousness, Paul had quite a resumé of service to anthroposophy and to the world-at-large: He had a medical practice open to the public, and many of his patients were Hasidic Jews, a great credit to him since Hasidics usually deal with their own community. He had training in psychiatry, as well as internal medicine; he formed the Fellowship of Physicians and started ANTHA (the Anthroposophic Therapy and Hygiene Association). He was active in the Medical Section of the Goetheanum; he wrote and published many articles and pamphlets; he trained co-workers in all aspects of care; he was a Class Holder of the School of Spiritual Science, and he helped to establish the North American Collegium of the School.

Sign for the Fellowship Community

for members & friends

Paul spent his life battling the dragons of the state regulators and the dehumanizing of modern medicine. He helped to form “Patients Have Rights,” a political action group. He worked to pass three laws in NY to permit variances in the law to support care in a community. He worked to promote two laws for freedom in health care regarding complementary and alternative medicine.

Paul leaves behind his wife, right arm and Twin Soul, Ann, their four children: Michael, Christopher, Katherine, and John, and many grandchildren.

One cannot help but admire Paul’s creative genius and the incredible vision he was able to bring to reality. He was a profound scholar of the time-spirit Michael, a dedicated meditant, a warrior against the “ahrimanization” of medicine; an amazing intuitive; the corniest joker ever. He was teacher and father figure to all who worked with him, and a perfectionist like his mother, seeming to demand the same of others, and few could measure up.

A great leader and activist is gone from us. May those who follow in his footsteps have the strength and will to carry on Paul’s great mission!

We are not granted

A rest on any step;

~ Rudolf Steiner

Remembering Paul Scharff

by Harold Bush

In the summer of 1972 my wife, who was pregnant at the time, was suffering from acute asthma. I needed to find an alternative to allopathic drug therapy which wasn’t working and was causing us concern for our soon-to-be-born child. I was given the name of an “alternative medical practitioner” who turned out to be Dr. Paul W. Scharff, an anthroposophic physician. In the subsequent 42 years he became my physician, my friend and my mentor.

In the late 1970’s I was recruited by Paul to volunteer at the Fellowship Community as a co-worker living off site. This offered an opportunity to experience and understand Paul’s (and Ann Scharff’s, it is not possible to separate them) approach to community where one finds a medical doctor working in the gardens, cleaning, working in the wood shop, doing building maintenance, and so forth. The ideal of care as a central activity creates the form, a Rosicrucian community, built on the fundamentals of threefolding, to manifest a truly human experience. It is a Michaelic work that I feel privileged to have observed.

In a medical office visit early in our relationship I asked what I might read to learn more about Rudolf Steiner’s work. He very appropriately suggested I first read Eleven European Mystics. I also came to appreciate his sense of humor. After working through cancer, my office visits were necessarily less frequent; he would often come into the waiting room and ask me, “Still alive?” Anyone who worked with tools in the early work days at the Fellowship had the humorous experience of reading pharmaceutical instructions (think suppositories) which Paul and Finbarr Murphy adhered to the handles. Our relationship was informed by our mutual appreciation for each other’s experience of farm life in our youth and a mutual respect for the application of common sense in all facets of life. Over forty-two years there were many conversations of a spiritual nature and many instances of caring and support. Many lessons were learned by pondering answers given to my questions. One lesson in particular that I carry and find immensely helpful came from his life experience of having a brother with a challenging incarnation. Relating what he understood of that incarnation gave me an understanding of the karma of humanity as a whole. How certain souls incarnated in circumstances that took on our collective karma that allowed us to do the work in privileged circumstances that

would not have otherwise been possible. Paul’s was an individuality specifically tasked by anthroposophy to carry the work forward, who will continue in that regard from the spiritual world and through the legacy of his writing.

Paul Scharff, MD by Claus Sproll

Whenever I talked with Paul, and that was many times over the last twenty years, I experienced a sense of the magnitude of the moment, of importance and often timelessness. We talked about community, the spiritual world, the meaning of work, governance in today’s world full of opposing forces, and the seriousness of being on the path of spiritual development.

I spent hours listening to his many ideas and discussed—and challenged at times his approach—some of the ideas that he has attempted to bring into the world. Some of those ideas and insights (flat organizational structure in circles of responsibility, attendance to details to the small things, etc.) are challenging for our current set of concepts. Some are future-bearing and we struggle to understand. I was very well aware of how many colleagues and friends did not find the patience or perseverance to listen to Paul going often over the same content, same ideas—but I was determined to understand and listen to the message behind the words.

I had experienced Paul in his fifties as member of the medical section, as a mover and shaker in the fight for patients’ rights, and I experienced his striving to bring about change. I shared with him aspects of community building in Camphill and he had much to say about this; he had talked with Carlo Pietzner and explored the needs for community. I saw him in moments of illness, of recovery—one time he had to learn to write again—and moments of interacting with coworkers in his place, the Fellowship Community—his life’s work and really his building, his commu-

nity and social temple in this incarnation.

So, who was this man? He was a medical doctor with keen insight into the person with an illness. We could experience a strong personality with charisma, ability to influence and at times control people; a caring person, devoted to Rudolf Steiner as his spiritual guide; a striving person in the context of community.

We honor his spirit by acknowledging that he was a ROSICRUCIAN.

We honor his soul by acknowledging his TEMPLE building in the social and physical realm.

We honor his body of work on earth by celebrating this WORKER in the garden of the world.

The Fellowship is an intentional, intergenerational community for the care of the elderly. We see a true servant of the time spirit in his work on eldercare in community that he pioneered well before anyone even saw the issue. In the same way that we rolled our eyes abut BD preparations (stuffing cow manure into horns and burying them) years ago and now all are interested, the idea of intergenerational community and the joy of aging, the idea of death as a part of life or a new birth, are all such a reality when you look at this life.

Florence Rohde 6/26/1912–11/4/2012

Florence Rohde crossed the threshold peacefully on November 4th, 2012 in San Francisco, California, four months after celebrating her 100th birthday. Born Florence Charlotte Poch, on June 26, 1912 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she was the eldest of four children of immigrant parents. Her early school years were spent in Milwaukee, taking the street-car or riding her bicycle—a novelty for a girl at that time. She showed a fondness for books and was known for bringing home armloads of books from the public library to satisfy her ever-growing curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. Piano lessons and summer camps at the lakes were also part of her childhood years.

In the early 1920’s while visiting in Stuttgart, her mother, Stephanie Poch, was introduced to the Waldorf School and anthroposophy through Florence’s uncle,

Emile Poch. This led to Florence and her brother spending two years at the Stuttgart Waldorf School during their high school years. Later she would speak fondly about this time in her life—her new friendships, the class hikes and outings in the mountains, and, among her teachers, Herbert Hahn, and the Youth Service. The arrival of the Depression required her and her brother to return to the States, where she completed high school. Some forty years later, in 1967, she had occasion to visit some of her former classmates at a class gathering in Stuttgart.

Soon after completing high school she began studying anthroposophy. In March 1937, at age 25, Florence joined the Anthroposophical Society and this led to her faithful participation in study groups over the next sixty years. Four months after joining the Society, she married and over the next eight years bore three children.

Throughout this time, Florence was a witness and participant in a part of the pioneering of anthroposophy in America. There were guest lecturers on a circuit, coming to Chicago and Milwaukee including Hans and Ruth Pusch, Herman Grosse, Hebel, and Poppelbaum. She participated (as Mary and as a shepherd) in performances of the Shepherds’ Play directed by her mother and in celebrating other festivals with the local branches in Milwaukee. There was the “eurythmy camp” with Lucy Neuscheller in New Hampshire in the summer (1940-41?) that required driving to the East Coast on the newly built Pennsylvania Turnpike—first of its kind!

It is striking that while Florence was growing up and throughout her adult life, during this pioneering stage of anthroposophy finding its way into America, particularly in the Mid-West, and despite often fragile beginnings, Florence was always graced to be located in areas where there was an active study group—Milwaukee, Louisville and San Antonio; and, her quiet, persistent study always accompanied her

obligations and love for homemaking and serving as wife, mother, and later as grandmother.

When her family had grown, two of her fondest activities were biodynamic gardening and the Waldorf kindergarten. When she wasn’t in her garden she would drive two hours south, commuting to the Sunny Meadow/Milwaukee Waldorf School as a volunteer in the kindergarten, singing German songs and playing games with the children. During the last fifteen years of her life, on the West Coast, she was privileged to be invited at one point to serve as the “kindergarten grandmother” at the Santa Cruz Waldorf School. One morning as Florence was arriving, one of the children ran up to her and asked earnestly, “Are you the queen of the world?”

Florence participated in lyre conferences, Anthroposophical conferences, painting workshops, and the Hauschka massage training of Frau Marbach. Visits to the Camphill Community, where she also was graced to make new friends, allowed her to participate in its festivals and events.

While she held anthroposophy close to her in her quiet way, she never forgot to integrate the “outside world” into her life. She was an active member and volunteer of her local public library, garden club and homemakers.

In her final months, in San Francisco, she was still reading studiously. This time she was reading people—all the people she met in passing on the bus, in the parks, or at the symphony hall—and not without humor or compassion.

When asked once about her first conscious meeting with anthroposophy she said, “I recognized it. I just knew it!”

Johanna Rohde Michaelmas, 2013

for members & friends

Mason Edward Collins

9/11/1937—8/25/2013

Those whose souls have been deeply influenced by anthroposophy incorporate its essence into their lives in their own unique ways. In some, this influence translates into great

New Members of

flurry of activity, and outer expressions. In some others, however, the influence works like a steady candle, protected and nurtured with constant care over a long period of time, leading to effects that are visible more inwardly. One such soul was Mason Edward Collins, who departed the world of the senses Sunday, August 25, 2013, age 75.

Born in Palacios, Texas, on September 11, 1937 to Orie Arthur Collins, Sr., and Lera Lucille Hunt, Mason’s life was characterized in its first period by various moves by the family. Until the time Mason entered sixth grade, this family of seven had moved at least seven times, covering Palacios, the East Coast from Maryland to Florida (for Orie’s work in the dredge), and the area of Texas around Houston: Pasadena, Rosharon, Wharton, back to Rosharon,

Members Who Have Died

Carla De Jong, Copake, NY; 4/19/2014

Gustave Frouws, Cathedral City, CA; 2/21/2014

Monica Grudin, Rosendale, NY; 9/29/2013

Patricia Kehoe, Charlevoix, MI; 5/2/2014

Harry Kretz, Ghent, NY; 12/5/2013

Martina Mann, East Troy, WI; 4/1/2014

Frederick Moyer, Fair Oaks, CA; 3/4/2014

Julian R. Norwood, Chattanooga, TN; 2/17/2014

Barbara J. Peterson, Viroqua, WI; 4/17/2013

Paul Scharff, Spring Valley, NY; 4/29/2014

the Anthroposophical Society in America, recorded 2/19/2014 to 7/15/2014

Susan Abarbanel, Great Barrington, MA

Rosa Lilian Alvarez, Dexter, MI

Anna Bedinger, Liberty, MO

Jesse Bedirian, Boulder, CO

Diego Bedolla, El Paso, TX

Daniel S Birns, Santa Cruz, CA

Tischia Bluske, Castaic, CA

Allison Bradley, San Cristobal, NM

Christian Brigouleix, Lancaster, PA

Ramona Budrys, Los Altos, CA

Andrea Cooper, Amherst, MA

Brooke Curie, Ann Arbor, MI

Jada D’Angelo, Dripping Springs, TX

John DiGregorio, New York, NY

Robert Enno, Austin, TX

Thomas Finser, El Paso, TX

Meredith Floyd-Preston, Portland, OR

Laura Foody, Wellesley, MA

Uta Gabler, Santa Rosa, CA

Meg Gardner, Boulder, CO

Bettina C Hindes, Denver, CO

Scherry Hodges, Austin, TX

Kelly A Hodgkin, Shingle Springs, CA

Debra Katchen, Galesburg, IL

Marc Katchen, Galesburg, IL

Patricia Kirtley, Charlottesville, VA

Hiromi Koyanagu, Altadena, CA

Lisa Krogh, Spring Valley, NY

William Layher, Saint Louis, MO

Pamela Leland, Saint Paul, MN

Robin Lieberman, Portland, OR

Aaryn Lowerre, Santa Cruz, CA

Donna Marcantonio, Sarasota, FL

Dawn McCoy, Charlottesville, VA

Andrea Naft, Baltimore, MD

Anne Nicholson, Nashville, TN

Katherine Nickel, Williamsburg, MA

Kari Marie Olson, Oakdale, MN

Paul Gino Orsi, Rodeo, CA

David Owen-Cruise, Ypsilanti, MI

Spyros Papadimas, Reisterstown, MD

Linda Park, High Falls, NY

Robert Pegg, Potter Valley, CA

Lorna Persson, Charlestown, RI

Lisa Platt, Kenilworth, PA

Laura Posusta, Broomfield, CO

Kyle Queen, Newport, RI

Magdalena Reiber, Bourbonnais, IL

Lee Renner, Modesto, CA

Valerie Renslow, Canoga Park, CA

Elizabeth Riungu, Shannock, RI

Kenny Ruffin, Columbus, OH

Marisela Saenz, Miami, FL

Ryan Schoenberg, McKinney, TX

Christine Shaw, Belchertown, MA

Nathan Stanislawski, Clinton Township, MI

Angela Nusbaum Steinrueck, Chestnut Ridge, NY

Daniel Stokes, Chatsworth, CA

Mikae Toma, Chestnut Ridge, NY

Sheila West, Crownsville, MD

Philip Wharton, Novato, CA

and Iowa Colony.

Following this was a period of intense physical activity. On one side, this expressed itself in sports, earning him the title of Mr. Sportmanship in High School, and on the other side through the jobs he took as a roustabout and a roughneck. It was at the age of about 35, after completing college, finishing up a stint in the Army, and starting a family (wife Ann, children Dawn, Mark and Diana), that the connection with anthroposophy was formed. Having moved to New York to work for Beechnut, he spotted Rudolf Steiner’s Cosmic Memory in the window of a bookstore. After repeated readings of this book upon his return to Texas, he ordered all the works of Steiner in print at the time.

Mason’s reclusive social nature was hence balanced out by a deep interest in anthroposophy, enabling him to cultivate it in relative peace and quiet, and to pass on this knowledge to his children in an equally measured tone— upon requests. It was in this way that many of these rare communications about anthroposophy left a deep impression on his children, which could be freely taken up with enthusiasm later in their lives. Mason attended meetings of anthroposophical groups in Houston; his contributions are remembered for their clarity and steadiness. He also contributed in the work of the Christian Community.

The final phase of Mason’s life was involved in the struggle with Parkinson’s disease. This period was very intense for both Mason and his family, as in addition to Mason’s overcoming the physical difficulties and mental blocks, everyone could prepare to approach his crossing of the threshold with courage and acceptance. It is one thing to show a life lived well; Mason’s passing also showed how one could die well, in peace, retaining the capacity to smile in spite of Parkinson’s, up to the very end. His life is thanked, and dearly missed, by his family and friends.

By a member of the Houston Friends of Michael Group

basic questions of anthroposophy

How Anthroposophical Groups Prepare for the Sixth Epoch — Community Above Us: Christ in Us

by Rudolf Steiner

Editor’s note: In the last issue we began a new feature on “basic questions of anthroposophy.” We have had a number of help suggestions for future articles. One which we will follow up on perhaps in the next issue is the references in anthroposophy to “Christ” and “Christian”—which would appear to most people today to refer to some aspect of the institutional Christian religion(s). Not so! Suggestions in advance for clarifying this are most welcome!

This time we are sharing an excerpt from a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner to inaugurate the Düsseldorf Branch in Germany on June 15, 1915.1 Why does the Anthroposophical Society have branches and groups of a long-term character, rather than focusing on the widest distribution of anthroposophical insights in public meetings? It is because, Steiner advises, we are practising a social way of being with each other which is not supported by today’s individualist and materialist culture... This subject relates to the intended conversations at the annual meeting and conference this year (see p.3), and to the remarkable work of the Fellowship Community (see p.36). Your thoughts are welcome, to editor@anthroposophy.org or “Editor, 1923 Geddes Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48104.”

[Working Together in Groups & Branches]

rightly, we have to realize that we make a certain further distinction, even if only in thought, between the work we perform in a group like this and our other work in the world. Those who are unwilling to become more intimately acquainted with certain truths regarding the spiritual progress of humanity might ask: Couldn’t you pursue anthroposophy without forming separate, closed groups, simply by finding lecturers within these groups and providing opportunities for people who may not know each other to come together? Couldn’t you just invite the public, so as to impart to their souls the spiritual insights and practices of which you anthroposophists speak? Of course we could proceed in this way. But as long as it is at all possible to establish communities of people who know one another, who gather in these working groups with the highest degree of friendship and brotherly love,3 we want to continue doing so, in full consciousness of the attitude of soul that is integral to anthroposophy. [299/300]

2

We have gathered here today mainly to inaugurate the Branch founded by our friend, Prof. Craemer, a Branch wishing to dedicate its energies to the spiritual life of the present and future in the way that has been cultivated within our movement. On such an occasion it is always good to recall why it is that we come together in separate groups, and to ask: Why do we join together in working groups, and why do we cultivate within such groups the spiritual insights and practices to which we intend to dedicate ourselves?

If we want to answer these questions

1 A substantial revision by Frederick Amrine of the anonymous translation issued by the Anthroposophic Press in 1957.

2 Rubrics in square brackets interpolated by F.A.

4 It is not insignificant that among us there are people who want to cultivate the more intimate side of spiritual knowledge and make a solemn vow to work together in brotherly love and harmony. It’s not just that our relationships and collaborations are affected by our ability to speak quite differently among ourselves, knowing that we are speaking to other souls who have consciously affiliated with us and bound themselves to us—not only is this so, but there’s something else besides. Indeed, by forming separate branches we are intimately connected with the whole conception which we hold of our movement if we are to understand its inmost nature. Our spiritual movement must imbue us with full awareness that it is significant not only for the existence that can be comprehended by the senses and for the existence that can be comprehended by the outwardly-oriented human understanding,

3 freundschaftlichst und brüderlichst

4 These bracketed numbers indicate the page breaks in the German original, GA/CW 159.

basic questions of anthroposophy

but also that through this movement our souls are seeking a real and genuine link with the spiritual worlds. Again and again, in full consciousness, we should say to ourselves: Through the cultivation of anthroposophy we translate our souls as it were into spheres which are peopled not only by earthly beings but also by the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, the Beings of the invisible worlds. We must realize that our work is of significance for these invisible worlds, that we are actually within these worlds. In the spiritual world, the work performed by those who know one another within such groups is very different from the kind of work that is carried on outside such a group and dissipated within the wider world. The work carried out in brotherly harmony within our groups has significance for the spiritual world very different from that of other work we might undertake. [300/301] To understand this fully we must remind ourselves of important truths we have studied from many aspects during recent years.

Let us recall that Earth evolution in the Post-Atlantean age was sustained initially by the cultural community that we call the Ancient Indian Epoch. This was followed by the Ancient Persian Epoch—the designation is not entirely appropriate, but we need not go into that now. Then came the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian Epoch, then the Greco-Latin, then our Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. Each of these epochs has, on the one hand, the task of cultivating a particular form of culture and of spiritual life that it is meant to contribute primarily to the externally visible world. But each epoch must at the same time prepare, bear with in its womb as it were, what is to come in the ensuing period of culture.

Within the womb of the Ancient Indian Epoch, that of Ancient Persia was prepared; within the Ancient Persian Culture that of the Egypto-Chaldean Epoch was prepared in turn, and so on. Our Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch must prepare the coming Sixth Epoch of culture. Our task in anthroposophy is not only to gain spiritual riches for our own souls—those things are granted us for the eternal life of our souls—but it is also our task to prepare what will constitute the content, the specific external work of the Sixth Cultural Epoch. Thus it

has been in each of the Post-Atlantean Epochs. The sites at which the salient form of external life belonging to the next epoch of culture was always prepared were those of the Mysteries. In these associations people gathered to engage in practices other than those cultivated in the outer world.

[301/302]

The Ancient Indian Epoch was primarily concerned with the cultivation of the human etheric body, the Ancient Persian Epoch with the cultivation of the astral body, the Egypto-Chaldean with that of the sentient soul, the Greco-Latin with that of the intellectual or mind soul. Throughout its duration, our own epoch will develop and unfold what is called the consciousness or spiritual soul. But that which will give to external culture in the Sixth Epoch its content and character is something that must be prepared in advance. Oh, this Sixth Epoch! It will display many features, it will reveal many characteristics that are very different indeed from those of our age. Three characteristic traits can be emphasized above all, and we must realize that they should be carried in our hearts for the Sixth Epoch of culture, that it is our task to prepare them for this Sixth Epoch.

[Three New Characteristics]

Contemporary human society still lacks the quality which, in the sixth Epoch, will be a characteristic of those who are held to have reached the goal of that epoch, who haven’t fallen short of it. Of course it’s a quality that will not be found in the Sixth Epoch among those who have still remained at the stage of savages or barbarians. One of the most significant characteristics of Earth-dwellers who have attained the peak of culture in the Sixth Epoch will be a certain moral quality. Little of this quality is noticeable yet within modern humanity. Those living today must be very delicately organized for their souls to feel pain when they see others in the world whose circumstances are less happy than their own. It is true that more delicately organized personalities feel pain at the suffering that has been poured out over many people in the world—but this can be said only of the people whose constitutions are particularly sensitive. Those who stand at the peak of culture in the Sixth Epoch will not only feel pain such as is caused today by

the sight of poverty, suffering, and misery in the world, but such persons will experience the suffering of others as their own suffering. [302/303] If they see someone who is hungry they will feel hunger right down into their own physical bodies so acutely that the hunger of the others will be unbearable to them. The moral characteristic indicated here is that, unlike conditions in the Fifth Epoch, in the Sixth Epoch the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon the well-being of the whole. Just as nowadays the well-being of a single human limb depends upon the health of the whole body, and when the whole body is not healthy the single limb does not feel up to doing its work, so in the Sixth Epoch a common consciousness will lay hold of the most highly evolved individuals and, to a far higher degree than a limb feels the health of the whole body, the individual will feel the suffering, the need, the poverty, or the wealth of the whole. This preeminently moral trait is the first of those that will characterize human civilization in the Sixth Epoch.

A second fundamental characteristic will be that everything we call articles of belief will depend to a far, far higher degree than is the case today upon the single individualities. Anthroposophy expresses this by saying that in every sphere of religion in the Sixth Epoch, complete freedom of thought and a yearning for freedom of thought will become so strong that religious convictions will rest wholly within the power of each individuality. Collective beliefs that exist in so many forms today among the various communities will no longer influence those who constitute the civilized portion of humanity in the Sixth Epoch of culture. Everyone will feel that complete freedom of thought in the domain of religion is a fundamental human right. [303/304]

The third characteristic of the Sixth Epoch will be that only those who know the spirit will be considered to have real knowledge, only those who know that the spiritual pervades the world and that human souls must unite with the spiritual. What is called science today with its materialistic cast will no longer be considered science at all in the Sixth Post-Atlantean Epoch. It will be seen as antiquated superstition, able

to pass muster only among those who have remained behind at the stage of the nowsuperseded Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. Today we regard it as superstition when, let us say, an aboriginal holds the view that no limb ought to be separated from his body at death, because this would make it impossible for him to enter the spiritual world as a whole man. Such beliefs still connect the idea of immortality with pure materialism, with the belief that an impress of the entire bodily form must pass into the spiritual world. This way of thinking remains materialistic while believing in immortality. Having learned through anthroposophy that the spiritual must be distinguished from the body and that only the spiritual passes into the supersensible world, we regard such materialistic beliefs in immortality as superstitions. Similarly, in the Sixth Epoch all materialistic beliefs, even within science, will be regarded as antiquated superstition. And as a matter of course humanity will accept as science only such forms of knowledge as are based upon the spiritual, upon pneumatology.5

[The Purpose of Anthroposophy]

The whole purpose of anthroposophy is to prepare in this sense for the Sixth Epoch of culture. We try to cultivate anthroposophy in order to overcome materialism, to prepare the kind of science that must exist in that epoch. We found communities within which there must be no dogmatic beliefs or any tendency to accept teaching simply because it emanates from one person or another. [304/305] We found communities within which everything, without exception, must be built upon the souls’ free assent to the teachings. That is how we are preparing what anthroposophy calls freedom of thought. And by coming together as intentional communities for the purpose of cultivating anthroposophy in brotherly love, we are preparing the culture, the civilization of the Sixth PostAtlantean Epoch.

But we must look even more deeply into the course of human evolution if we are to understand fully the real tasks of our fraternal groups and branches. During the

5 From the Greek pneuma, meaning “spirit.” Hence “pneumatology” (which exists as a technical term within theology) means “the study of the spirit.”

First Post-Atlantean Epoch, in communities which in those days were connected with the Mysteries, our ancestors also cultivated what subsequently prevailed in the Second Epoch. Such communities during the First, Ancient Indian Epoch were connected with the cultivation of the astral body, which was to become the main task of the Second Epoch. It would lead much too far afield today if we tried to describe what, in contrast to the external culture of the First, was developed in these ancient Indian communities in order to prepare for the Second, Ancient Persian Epoch. But this may be said: when those who lived during the Ancient Indian Epoch came together in order to prepare what was necessary for the Second Epoch, they felt: We have not yet attained, nor do we have within us, what we’ll have when our souls are incarnated in the next Epoch. It still hovers above us. And in truth it was so. In the First Epoch of culture, that which was to descend from the heavens to the Earth in the Second Epoch still hovered over the souls of our ancestors. The work achieved on Earth by intimate communities of people connected with the Mysteries was of such a nature that forces flowed upwards to the Spirits of the Higher Hierarchies, enabling them to nourish and cultivate what was to stream down into the souls of human beings as substance and content of the astral body in the Second, Ancient Persian Epoch. The forces that descended into the souls incarnated in the bodies of Ancient Persian civilizations at a later stage of maturity were like little children in the First Epoch. [305/306] Forces streaming upwards from the work of human beings below in preparation for the next epoch were received and nurtured by the spiritual world above. These forces were then used to cultivate the new forces that were to flow down again later. And so it must be in every later epoch of culture.

[The Spirit Self in Its Infancy]

In our epoch we must become aware that the faculty our ordinary civilization and culture calls forth within us must be the consciousness soul. It must be what has taken hold of humanity beginning with the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries in the form of science and materialistic consciousness of the external world. This will become more and more widespread, until by the end of the Fifth Epoch it will have become fully evolved.

But it is the spirit self that must be grasped by the Sixth Epoch. It will have to be called forth within human souls, just as now the consciousness soul is being developed. The nature of spirit self is that it must presuppose the existence in human souls of the three characteristics I’ve described. In the idiom of anthroposophy: social life in which brotherliness prevails, freedom of thought, and pneumatology. These three characteristics are essential in the community of human beings within which the spirit self is to develop as the consciousness soul develops in the souls of the Fifth Epoch. Thus we can imagine that by uniting in fraternal working groups, something hovers invisibly over our work, something that is like the child of the forces of the spirit self—the spirit self that is nurtured by the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies in order that it may stream down into our souls when they are again on Earth in the Sixth Epoch of civilization. In our groups we perform work that streams upwards towards those forces that are being prepared for the spirit self...

“Philadelphia,” by Larry Young

Transformative Education and the Arts