articles: Anthroposophy

Water, Our Holy Teacher

“God reveals Himself in His creations and whoever would know God must learn to know the true essence of these creations.”
Dr. Rudolf Steiner, from the Stages of Higher Knowledge

Creative Renunciation

Water does not demand for itself a specific form, it takes the form of the vessel into which it is oured. It does not have an “ego” but by not demanding a form, it creates a space that enables things to experience themselves. We know that in the physical world the greater the force we apply, the
more we can “move mountains.” If we want to bring about a change in the physical world we need to
show a strong will. However, in all true spiritual paths, there is a spiritual law to be mindful of – if we want to gain access to the spiritual world we have to completely let go of our own will, or egoism, and devote ourselves to the spiritual essence we want to understand.

Can we create a new space in order to contain, to perceive, to wonder? Some would call this the capacity for “unconditional love,” the place in which the human being puts herself aside and says, “I, with my willing, my feelings, my thoughts, am not important now. I will let that which stands in front of me speak. I will turn myself to water.” Water teaches us the force of renunciation. Not oiding myself out of lack of self-esteem but waiving my purely personal stance out of spiritual strength, out of creativity.

The Universal Womb

We know from research about life that all forms of life known on earth must go through at least one
stage of their life cycle in liquid water. The embryo in the womb of the mother, the chrysalis before it
transforms into a butterfly, Jesus in his Baptism in the River of Jordan when He received the Christ into his physical existence. The chemical reason for this is that water is an ideal medium for chemical reactions as each element feels safe enough that it can join or part with another element.

Can we learn from this “ultimate host” how to create a lifesupporting space? A space in which each true meeting is done out of real listening, out of caring; where the inner and the outer find ways of
self-expression; where it is legitimate to have doubts and to make mistakes. A space that does
not dictate but enables, carries and supports the individuals who are in it. A sharp rock would transform into a softer, rounder stone until at the end it turns into grains of sand.

The Vortex

In the physical world, in solid substances there is always a “power game” in space. When two solid
objects meet in space, one of the following situations must occur: either one body pushes the other
one, or they both break. When two human beings are wrestling, you either conquer space or you are
pushed away from space or you wrestle until the bitter end. When two strong streams of water meet in space, instead of going into a power game they start dancing around the “eye of their
meeting.” A new space is created, an open space that penetrates to the depths and enables a higher
element – air – to penetrate. Can we learn from this example how to meet our fellow human beings? How can we bring ourselves with all our might and accept into the space the full might of the other
person so that we don’t diminish one another? Can we, like water, enable the two forces to start dancing around a mutual centre? Can we invite into this centre a higher element than that which
each one would bring alone if the meeting hadn’t taken place?

The Never Ending Movement

Water never stops moving, it always moves in cycles, in an eternal cycle. It forms vapour, it condenses into rain and then streams into rivers, to the sea, and from there back again into vapour. Only in one situation does it look like the movement stops, when water freezes, but then we see a phenomena which is called “the Anomaly of Water.” In a solid state the mass and density of water
is lower than its liquid form at 4° C. “is means that ice does not sink but it floats upon the heavier water – a situation that enables water (and life in Arctic areas) to continue to move and flow underneath the ice.

Can we learn from this movement something essential about healing forces – mental healing forces as well as physical ones? Water asks us not to stop, not to solidify, not to sink down but to move, to change, to grow, to go through metamorphoses and transformations; renewal, laughter and sorrow, breakdown and build up, death and resurrection.

The Forces of Resurrection

In the high mountains, substance is taken out of the life cycle. Water goes over the surface of the earth in clouds, deep under the earth in groundwater and on the surface of the earth in familiar ways. Soil does not go out of the life cycle. When water falls down as rain on high mountains it penetrates through small cracks into the hardest of rocks, but when it freezes it has the capacity to expand – the cracks get bigger, the rocks break down and when the ice melts, the water carries the broken rocks down the mountain and they stream into rivers, where they become available to plants again. Water also brings minerals up through the roots of plants, which are fixed under the
earth, and water also moves substances from place to place by its flow upon the earth. Can we learn from water to see the world as one living organism? Can we be like water, which does not distinguish between nations, borders or closed spaces?

The Forces of Self Purification

Whatever dissolves in water, at the end of the day will emerge back out of
it again. Water has the capacity to take into itself many substances but
only for a limited time. It lets processes happen within it (see “the
Universal Womb”) but it does not want to hold onto things. It does not
need possessions, which is why on the banks of rivers or ponds, water frees
substances again. It cleans itself by evaporation or by throwing substances
to the banks of rivers and seas. Water purifies itself only in order to be able
to take in new substances in the future.

Can we learn to live in this way with matter, so that we always borrow, we never possess? Can we treat matter not as our own but as the world’s possession, given to us only for a limited time, a loan to be returned and know that our journey continues without it?
Above all, water teaches us the essence of love – love for life, for the world, for the other person and for ourselves. Isn’t it again time to sanctify God’s creation, to make it holy again, to educate our children, our friends and ourselves to conserve it?

- Chen Atid

Money and the Human Being

Introduction to College Week 2009 at Emerson College by Chen Atid.

People in our time tend to separate their thinking, feeling and doing. For example, you feel you want to lie down on a beach somewhere in the sun all day but you think it is not a serious thing to do, that you should actually work and do serious things in your life. Practically you probably do neither of these things. In our daily lives, we sometimes do what we think we should not, such as eat or drink things that we think are unhealthy for us.

Therefore, we can say we are half-conscious of this separation. There is one field of life where this separation turns into an almost pathological disconnection and that is the field of money. There we are largely unconscious of what we are doing. When we go into a shop, how do we decide what to buy? Usually we think only about ourselves and the benefits we get from buying this or that product. But if we look at a piece of chocolate for instance, do we think of the farmers who grow it, the truck drivers who deliver it, the sailors on the ship who transport it, the factory workers who manufactured it, the people who work in the shop and put it on the shelf?

Hundreds of people with their own families and children have worked to make it possible for us to buy this product. Do we ever think or feel anything about those people? Today in economic life, we have to realize that there is no such thing as “my money”. We have to think of money in the same way that we think about the atmosphere that surrounds us. If you pollute the atmosphere in one place, you are not polluting only your own surroundings but you are influencing the whole world.

What I do with money is always a giving and receiving process. If I take more, someone else receives less. If I want to buy the cheapest product, it actually means that I want to give as little as possible and receive as much as possible. Somebody gets less.

As human beings, we always live in what we might call the “Big Cross”.

I am always moving between my ideas (spiritual world) and the manifestation of them (matter, material world) and between the world and myself. The biggest error we have made is the misconception that money equals freedom. As modern people, it is justified to strive for freedom and as young people, one way we do that is via physical possessions, acquired with money. However, true human freedom has nothing to do with money. Human freedom is connected to the spiritual realm. By equating money with freedom, we expose ourselves to the two most powerful forces, which work contrary to freedom in human beings; Egoism and Fear.

It is justified for a time, as a young person, to want as much money as I can get, and through money and materialistic self -determination, to establish myself as an independent human being. Nevertheless, there comes a time when this has to stop and one needs to start giving to others. If we want to have as much money as possible and believe thereby we will find freedom, we will slowly discover we are disconnecting ourselves from true and meaningful relationships to other people and the spiritual world. If, on the other hand, we fill our soul with fear and anxiety of not having enough money, we slowly find ourselves not trusting anyone or anything and again losing our potential to connect to the spiritual world.

If we deeply understand that true freedom can be gained, only through spiritual knowledge and spiritual experience (see Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom) then money would find its true place, which is to enable love to find expression, not self-love, but love for the other.

We alone determine what has value for us. It could be a car, a big house, or perhaps friendships, caring for other people, or appreciation of nature.

We should change the term “downturn”, to just turn; we are at a turning point in human evolution. In 1919, Europe was in a great downturn after World War I, but one person, Rudolf Steiner, was able to turn in freedom, and started the first Waldorf -school, gave the impulse for biodynamic agriculture, a new way of working with medicine and so much more.

In a crisis we can act according to one of the three F`s (Freeze, Fight or Flight ) as animals do ,or we can act as human beings by finding a fourth ‘F’ , freedom , freedom to look for a new meaning for ourselves and the world.

By Chen Atid

The Essence of Meeting in the present time.

At the beginning of the 21st century it becomes harder and harder for people to meet one another. One of the reasons for this is the ‘consciousness mist’ in our thinking, feeling and willing.

What, or who, determines the agenda of our thinking?

In a time when mass media (radio, television, internet and newspapers) is so dominant, people find themselves thinking about things which are not at all essential for their daily life.

What, or who, determines our feelings?

We find ourselves with anxieties, pressures, strong emotions and longings for things (products as well as prestige) which do not organically emerge out of our immediate reality.

What or who determines our deeds (which are a manifestation of our will)?

Why do we wake up in the morning and do what we do?

What motivates us?

When was the last time you stopped for a minute to ask:” What have I done today?” “What have I felt today?” “What have I thought today?”

All these elements play an essential role (mostly unconscious )into how we meet one another. In order to turn each human encounter into a true and meaningful one we must cross two thresholds: an inner one and an outer one.

The First Threshold: “Who am I?”

In order to answer that question we have to take an inner journey that requires honesty and courage. The process is like opening a Russian doll (a doll which, when opened, has a smaller doll inside to find yet another one and again another one). Inside it we always have to penetrate deeper and deeper as layer after layer peels away.

Here we can remember the meeting between Alice and the caterpillar, who sits under the mushroom, in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”.

“The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

`Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I—I hardly know, sir, just at present— at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’

`What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!’

`I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir’ said Alice, `because I’m not myself, you see.’

`I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.

`I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,’ Alice replied very politely, `for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.’

`It isn’t,’ said the Caterpillar.

`Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,’ said Alice; `but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?’

`Not a bit,’ said the Caterpillar.

`Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,’ said Alice; `all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.’

`You!’ said the Caterpillar contemptuously. `Who are you?’

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, `I think, you out to tell me who you are, first.’

`Why?’ said the Caterpillar.

Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away. “

ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, By Lewis Carroll

The first layer is our nationality: am I English? , German? Chinese? Brazilian?, and so on?

If we are honest, we will see that many of our feelings, our habits of thought, and our will impulses are connected to our nationality.

Nevertheless, that’s not really us, we have to peel off that layer.

The second layer is our immediate family. How much do we resemble, not only in our body but also in our thoughts and feelings, the family we came from.

Nevertheless, that’s not really us; we have peel off that layer too.

The third layer is our gender (female and male). Here also, if we are honest enough, we see how strongly our gender determines our habits of thought, our emotions, our expectations, our longings, our obstacles and more.

Nevertheless, that is not really us; we have to peel that layer as well.

The fourth layer and the hardest one to overcome is our physical body. We can mention times when we went out of our house and we hadn’t combed our hair properly or are bit unkempt without noticing it, until someone make us aware of it. We do not think something is wrong with our appearance. This actually means that our self-consciousness is actually detached from our body until some outer element awakens us to our body.

Nevertheless, that is not really us; we have to peel off that layer.

Now, after we have peeled off all the outer layers, we must stand inside ourselves.

We are used to standing in front of ourselves, for instance in front of a mirror. However, the mirror does not show us our essence. Our essence is hidden from any mirror. In reality, our spiritual element, our true ‘I’, is what differentiates us from any other human being. Here we are only ourselves. meeting our true “I” is on one hand a deeply joyful moment (we are more than just a body, more than is present in time and a specific space) but on the other hand it can be sobering and even sad (we are very lonely there in the beginning).

There are great dangers in this inner meeting. We have built all those layers in order to defend ourselves, but now we have to be ready to meet ourselves. This meeting forces us to see all our imperfections, all our lies, our immorality and, our jealousies, our desires and, our hatreds, and all which live in our soul. Now we have to confront all this directly, in the light of our consciousness.

The most reliable way to prepare ourselves for this meeting is, by strengthening and deepening the will element in our thought (see Dr. Steiner’s books “How to Know Higher Worlds” and “The Philosophy of Freedom”) ,Then that meeting can be one of the happiest moments in our lives, because we find a glimpose of the infinite potential that lives in us.

The Second Threshold:” Who are you?”

In the second stage, we have to embed all the transformational work we have done on ourselves within our meeting of the other person. This means, first of all, to overcome our prejudices and prejudgments (we have to be fully honest with ourselves) when we see the other. Do we really not judge other people by nationality, color of skin, family they come from, the economic or academic status, how famous they are, and the hardest of all, to see the other person beyond his connection to a certain gender or having a certain body.

I had to peel off all these layers in order to find who I am, so why can’t I use the same criteria to find out who you are?

If we can answer the question ‘who am I?’

with the answer:” I am a special individual spiritual being who does not obey the laws of time and space”.

If we could answer the question: ‘who are you?’

With the answer: “you are a special individual spiritual being that does not obey the laws of time and space. Only then can we say:”We have really met”.

Then we have described the first aim of Anthroposophy:

“Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in the human being as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. They alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds in it what they themselves in their own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst.”

Written by Chen Atid

(Based on a talk given to students at Emerson College on the 18/09/2008)

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, Dr. Rudolf Steiner

Challenges

If we look at the biography of the human being we will see that in order to develop in a healthy way, the first step must be to develop one’s own individuality. In order to do this, man has to be egoistic in the beginning, to think only about himself, to see things only in their relation to himself and if they are good and supportive for him.

We don’t expect a baby to think about his mother and her problems but to think “only about himself” and we are not angry if he is hungry and demands to be fed immediately There is a very important spiritual law regarding development:

1. The first stage of development: the developing elements are centered on oneself and development is always at the expense of another. We can call this stage “Acquiring Debt”.
2. There comes a stage in development which we can call “The Turning Point”. In this stage, if the developing element continues to care only about oneself, the justified debt is not justified anymore and its supportive environment cannot support any longer. This may even damage the health of its surroundings.
3. The developing element in order to continue developing must start to “Repay the Debt”.

One example can be the development of a rose. In the first stage it takes water, nutrition, light and warmth from its surroundings. It builds itself as a thorn bush. If it would continue growing in that way, it would turn into a noxious weed which no one would like in his garden, but it “knows” at a certain point to change the direction of its development and then it produces a flower which gives fragrance, color and beauty to the whole garden. We can say as gardeners, who supported it, that it was worth it!

Humanity, like an individual man, has a biography as well. For thousands of years, the relationship between humanity and the Earth was like a child to his parents. The Earth nourished humanity and helped its development; humanity did not think at all about any of her problems, but only what it could receive from her. In all these years, man developed himself, at the cost of the earth, to high stages of freedom and independence. Today large parts of humanity can choose how to dress, whether to bring children into the world and how many, what to eat, in what profession to work, whom to marry, where to live and so on. Of course, people can say “it’s not enough yet, we want to have more freedom” which manifests sometimes as having more material wealth, which means taking even more from the Earth. But the debt is huge, and we have already passed the Turning Point in our time with freedom; we must learn to take responsibility for that debt and to start to repay it. We have continued taking, beyond the Turning Point and this has brought about evil, destruction and illness in all fields of life. We must change direction. The next stages of development are about repaying the debt which in the widest sense we can define as follows: It doesn’t matter what you do as an adult in our time. The important thing is that it will have in it an element of healing.

In all fields of life, we can identify stages of illness – in education, agriculture, family relations, medicine, ecology, economics, art and politics.

The debt is so huge that no matter how much good will and responsibility an individual is willing to take, one alone cannot do much. We must, therefore, learn to find partners and to work with other people in order to give real healing to the world today. But this brings us to another law: that in order to work with other people, each individual must do what he can do best and must let others do what they can do best. This means that if you do what you should not be doing you are blocking the development of at least two people; one, you are not freeing the space for the one who has to do the job, and second you are wasting your energies by not doing what you should be doing. This situation opens for us essential questions about “Knowing Ourselves”.

How can we know our true task? Who are the “enemies” which prevent us from really knowing our mission?

In order to answer these questions, we need to look closely at the soul drama which is happening in our times.

What prevents us from taking responsibility out of freedom?

(The enemies of consciousness and self knowledge in the present time)

From Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual research, we know that the real drama in the present time is in the centre of the heart of the human soul. We also know that the human soul is ‘made’ out of three elements which we can call:

• Thinking
• Feeling
• Willing

Willing refers to what we do in the world and our ability to do that, not the mental picture of what we think we want to do. If we take this into account then the struggle is threefold; we have a struggle in each one of these soul forces. Another thing we have to take into account is that the human being is connected to three worlds:

• The physical world (which is perceived by our senses).
• The world of the soul (our inner world, our private world which mediates between the other two worlds)
• The spiritual world (the world which is connected to the creative powers of the world).

Today, in all fields of life we are living in an experience which we can define as the “threshold”. The physical world which humanity has elevated in the last hundred years to be the one and only true world but which cannot respond anymore to present crises. We see more and more evidence that there is something else which is not perceptible to the senses and which plays into all the processes around us. We know for example, that a patient’s soul mood is as important as his physical situation with regard to his ability to overcome disease or illness. Science has shown in many cases, that our immune system is very closely connected to our moods of soul. Modern physics asks real questions and finds it hard to define time, space, continuity and so on. From all these we see that the next step in human development is closely connected to our ability to reconnect with the spring of creativity, the spiritual world, but without losing the freedom we achieved in thousands of years of struggle. Because we have crossed the turning point, if we do not reconnect with that world we are continuing to damage ourselves, and the world around us.

What prohibits us then from reconnecting with the creative forces?
Let’s look at each one of the three soul elements and the situation today.

Thinking
The normal way of thinking of contemporary humanity is denial of the spiritual world. Instead of being a centre of spiritual creativity the human being turns into a centre of doubt and intellectual dryness which depletes the soul instead of enhancing it.

Feeling
Feeling in contemporary humanity is not fully conscious and is controlled by prejudices, emptiness, lies and scorn concerning everything serious and real connected to the spirit. The centre of our feeling life, instead of being a centre of fire and enthusiasm for the spirit, turns into an empty space striving to be filled by things from outside the soul which can never really fill it.

Willing
The will in contemporary humanity is weak and controlled by fear instead of being the centre of courage to know the spirit. This turns into a centre of lethargy, a feeling of passiveness which can lead to complete paralysis of the will without hope for the future.
From here we see that we have to fill our thinking, feeling and willing with the forces of creative spirituality, the fire to know the spiritual world and the courage to work from it. If we could overcome these enemies of the soul, we would find the right connection to the spirit in our time and we could, out of freedom, take responsibility for our future development .This is connected to our ability to heal the people and the world around us. This ability can only come from true spiritual knowledge, the only source which enables us to understand the essential and true answers to the crises of our time.

Summary

A. The law of development:

1. Making debt.
2. Turning point.
3. Paying back, balancing the debt.

B. Working together:
Each of us has to do what he is supposed to do, and let others do as they have to do.

C. Know yourself:

1. Thinking: denial of the spirit, doubt and intellectual dryness, instead of being a centre of spiritual creativity.
2. Feeling: spiritual emptiness. Prejudices, scorn and lies which come from a lack of honesty instead of inner enthusiasm and fire for spiritual knowledge.
3. Willing: cutting-off, detachment from the spirit. Fear of the spiritual, which leads to paralysis of the will instead of the courage to act and work out of the sprit.

Chen Atid, Course Leader Foundation Year