Inner work and cultural impact
The conference The Foundation Stone and the Mantras of the School of Spiritual Science which took place at the Goetheanum from 1 to 3 November revealed new impulses for the working together of School members and class holders.
During the further training for class holders at the beginning of this gathering, Christiane Haid (Goetheanum) looked at the development of the Rosicrucian activities and the Rosicrucian words translated by Rudolf Steiner for the Foundation Stone Meditation (‘out of the Godhead we are born’) as well as at the endings of the September lessons where the connection between the Michael School and the Rosicrucian School is established.
With a contribution by Peter Selg, the second part of the class holders’ meeting focused on the development of the School of Spiritual Science, the history of the class holder’s task and the wider responsibility towards the Sections and the Anthroposophical Society.
Claus-Peter Röh (Goetheanum) described the current challenges: the path towards becoming a class holder is widening and the task of class holder always needs to be seen in the local and regional context. With the current generational change, the members in many places are willing to take co-responsibility for the class work. How can ways of working evolve in the context of the class lessons that allow individualized paths to unite into carrying communities, where the connection between inner work and Section work (or the work in the spheres of life) can be strengthened?
Birth of an inner light
The conference of class holders and School members that followed was opened by Constanza Kaliks (Goetheanum) who spoke about the qualities of seeing and listening. She linked the birth of an inner light in the passage through darkness and the unfolding of a conversation out of the experience of listening with the imagination in the 10th class lesson, where the reading of the starry script evolves into an experience of hearing the speech of the gods. Building on this, Peter Selg (Goetheanum) elaborated on the importance of the heart organ for experiencing the event of the Christmas Conference of 1923/1924: in permeating our heart as a spiritual-physical being with Anthroposophia, we enable it to become an organ of perception both for our interpenetrating threefoldness and for our future tasks in relation to the further development of the anthroposophical movement.
Matthias Rang (Natural Science Section) asked if the sciences can learn, as in Goethean research, to interpret natural phenomena both scientifically and spiritually. He described an exercise involving the connection of the elements with different qualities of thinking: from the ‘either A or B’ in physical mechanics to a thinking in relation to fluid movement, in other words, from the airy qualities of spatial expansion and openness to the surroundings to the all-permeating quality of warmth. This was associated with the mantras of the first class and further to Earth’s atmospheric layers today.
Perceptive artistic activity
Speaking for the Humanities Section, Christiane Haid led over to transhumanism: to what extent is the perceptive human ‘I’ still participating in experiments we read about under headlines such as ‘AI Creates Art’? She linked the opposing Ahrimanic and Michaelic-Christian qualities of intelligence to the Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts on the one hand and to mantric motifs on the other, concluding that human artistic activity, which is perceptive and cognitive, will play a crucial role in the encounter with those forces.
Philipp Reubke from the Education Section continued this line of thought, pointing out that the human ability for autonomous creativity originates in early childhood. The educator’s ability to perceive this hidden spiritual essence in the still emerging being of the child is therefore crucial. This ability can be honed through the kind of inner development that working with the class content can facilitate.
These questions regarding the cultural impact of the School of Spiritual Science and its first class were deepened in the work groups which ranged from anthroposophically inspired meditation (Nathaniel Williams, Youth Section) to the connection between class lessons and eurythmy (Carina Schmid, CH).
Astounded listening
A new artistic experience in connection with language was explored on the final evening. Following Constanza Kalik’s introduction on the challenge of translating mantric texts, Rik ten Cate (NL), Marjatta van Boeschoten (GB) and Stefano Gasperi (IT) read the mantras of the 17th class lesson in Dutch, English and Italian respectively. Those who were not at home in the other languages spoke in retrospect of an astounded listening, particularly with the calm and simple mantric words, that engendered experiences comparable to ‘walking on new ground’, of sensing ‘closeness to the Michaelic being’.
With a view to the centenary next year of the September lessons and of Rudolf Steiner’s final address it was agreed to have the School of Spiritual Science conference not in November but from 25 September to Michaelmas day, on 29 September 2024.