articles: Anthroposophy

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