Social and Antisocial Forces in the Human Being
A Word Beforehand
In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner introduces two social exercises that have since become the basis for anthroposophical biography work. People who do this work find themselves grateful for the unexpected new understanding it gives rise to, both of themselves and their relationships with others. Ongoing changes in human consciousness, Steiner asserts, make work of this kind not just something of interest today, but personally and socially crucial. In "Social and Antisocial Forces", he outlines these significant - but mostly unnoticed - changes, and places them in historical context.
Rudolf Steiner's books and lectures take work to understand - but work of an especially good and healthy kind. He calls what he presents, and the methods by which he comes to his insights, spiritual science, and his use of the term "science" is fully intentional. He shares his observations and thinking in a step by step way, transparent to any open minded, thinking person. Reading Steiner is much more than informative, it's vigorous exercise, and generates benefits on inner levels - possibly more than one, you may find !
This said, it should be noted that his lectures, given for the most part to persons already familiar with his written work, assume familiarity with certain basic principles. To his credit, he most often provides review and background enough to make his content intelligible to a newcomer, if he or she is willing to think actively, and brings the needed goodwill.
The Guardian of the Threshold
One term not fully introduced before being used in this lecture, is "The Guardian of the Threshold". As preparation for these parts of "Social and Antisocial Forces", I'll introduce the term briefly.
Steiner's work elsewhere describes a spiritual world not spontaneously or naturally accessible to human beings at this time in history. This world can be found, however, in accounts of spiritual beings, and of interactions among them and with humans in the historical accounts of all peoples. These perceptions and this awareness of higher worlds were possible, per Steiner, in times when human consciousness had not yet immersed itself in the earthly, physical world, to the degree it has today. This deepening immersion has meant loss of supersensible perception - but also great gain in our ability to grasp laws of the physical world, and to work with them in endless ways. This blindness to the spiritual cosmos from which we have come, but no longer consciously know, is on the one hand a great loss, but on the other the source of our freedom, and our capacity for choice.
Knowledge of higher worlds is not permanently lost to humanity, however ; it can be regained in full consciousness, while retaining what's been learned in the earthly-physical ; and most importantly, in full freedom. This is best developed through training that includes the whole thinking, feeling and willing of the human being, and most importantly, includes progress in moral development at every step. Among Rudolf Steiner's most important contributions was to describe the path to initiation into knowledge of higher worlds in this new form.
It's not a matter of indifference whether humanity rises to this new evolutionary level. Although consciousness was of the spiritual world was lost, at deeper levels our connection was never lost. At these levels we continue to depend on it, at every moment. To believe only in the physical world, to depend on it alone, to adapt to it in all ways accordingly, would be to diverge with the greater universe, the source of our own life and being. The question is whether to learn to live with earnest, open questions concerning spiritual realities, to seek insight into the greater whole, and take part in it in freedom ; or to separate ourselves from it, at risk of becoming lost.
On the path of our development, there is a threshold that protects us from entering the spiritual world unprepared. On the one side of this threshold is the world of physical objects with which we're familiar, including our own physical bodies ; on the other a world of spiritual beings ; and also there, our own past thoughts, deeds and experiences and those of others, not lost, but preserved for all time.
We experience here a "guardian", a spiritual gatekeeper, who meets us in the form of all we have become in our earthly lives for the best - and also all we have not become, have done and not done for the worse - manifest as a single imposing being, an image of ourselves as we truly are. This same being shows to us that which is the very best in us, and that which shocks us, makes us ashamed and even terrified.
In this lecture Rudolf Steiner observes that in training for initiation, the whole of our humanity is prepared, so that this meeting is without harm. From this point forward the guardian will accompany us always in our awareness, both comforting us part at our progress, and showing us indelibly what remains to be done.
Approaching the guardian without such training, however, brings intense awareness of shortcoming, a sense of warning of what lacks in us, different in kind in different groupings of human beings. For those in the West, in English speaking peoples particularly, intense awareness arises of sickness and death, and of all things that intensify these processes ; and the need to learn and do what heals. For Central and Eastern European peoples not schooled for initiation on the universal human path, the encounter raises an excruciating experience of doubt, and a burning awareness of the need for truth in all matters of thinking, and of handling of facts. For the Eastern human being, especially the Russian peoples, the awareness that arises on approaching the Guardian is of the destructive and corrosive effects of selfishness, and the profound need for brotherhood, for attention to the needs of others, as if for oneself.
To summarize : discussion of successive cultural ages "(epochs") in this lecture highlight the changing consciousness of humanity over long periods of time. In the course of history, our deepening bond to the earthly and physical has absorbed our attention, so to speak, distracted it compellingly from the spiritual world from which it came - for a time completely. This path has made us richly competent in the physical, earthly realm - and endowed us with freedom.
A new access to the spiritual in ourselves and the universe has now become possible, and there exists training by which it can be attained, in a healthy and harmonious way. But it can also happen that this new possibility is missed ; and for our trajectory into the physical to overshoot. The mindset of materialism can blind us, both to our own nature, and that of the universe. Error can in this case only increase - exponentially - in our relationships with our world, with other human beings and with ourselves. We cannot keep all of this from ourselves forever, and it is such things the Guardian reflects to us, with shocking, terrifying force.
Awareness of these phenomena gives the two exercises here introduced context, and highlights their value in times that in many ways, are becoming more dark. Hopefully, these clarifications will make them more accessible, and the way to them more direct.
Next in series : Social and Antisocial Forces in the Human Being
A Word Beforehand
In this lecture, Rudolf Steiner introduces two social exercises that have since become the basis for anthroposophical biography work. People who do this work find themselves grateful for the unexpected new understanding it gives rise to, both of themselves and their relationships with others. Ongoing changes in human consciousness, Steiner asserts, make work of this kind not just something of interest today, but personally and socially crucial. In "Social and Antisocial Forces", he outlines these significant - but mostly unnoticed - changes, and places them in historical context.
Rudolf Steiner's books and lectures take work to understand - but work of an especially good and healthy kind. He calls what he presents, and the methods by which he comes to his insights, spiritual science, and his use of the term "science" is fully intentional. He shares his observations and thinking in a step by step way, transparent to any open minded, thinking person. Reading Steiner is much more than informative, it's vigorous exercise, and generates benefits on inner levels - possibly more than one, you may find !
This said, it should be noted that his lectures, given for the most part to persons already familiar with his written work, assume familiarity with certain basic principles. To his credit, he most often provides review and background enough to make his content intelligible to a newcomer, if he or she is willing to think actively, and brings the needed goodwill.
The Guardian of the Threshold
One term not fully introduced before being used in this lecture, is "The Guardian of the Threshold". As preparation for these parts of "Social and Antisocial Forces", I'll introduce the term briefly.
Steiner's work elsewhere describes a spiritual world not spontaneously or naturally accessible to human beings at this time in history. This world can be found, however, in accounts of spiritual beings, and of interactions among them and with humans in the historical accounts of all peoples. These perceptions and this awareness of higher worlds were possible, per Steiner, in times when human consciousness had not yet immersed itself in the earthly, physical world, to the degree it has today. This deepening immersion has meant loss of supersensible perception - but also great gain in our ability to grasp laws of the physical world, and to work with them in endless ways. This blindness to the spiritual cosmos from which we have come, but no longer consciously know, is on the one hand a great loss, but on the other the source of our freedom, and our capacity for choice.
Knowledge of higher worlds is not permanently lost to humanity, however ; it can be regained in full consciousness, while retaining what's been learned in the earthly-physical ; and most importantly, in full freedom. This is best developed through training that includes the whole thinking, feeling and willing of the human being, and most importantly, includes progress in moral development at every step. Among Rudolf Steiner's most important contributions was to describe the path to initiation into knowledge of higher worlds in this new form.
It's not a matter of indifference whether humanity rises to this new evolutionary level. Although consciousness was of the spiritual world was lost, at deeper levels our connection was never lost. At these levels we continue to depend on it, at every moment. To believe only in the physical world, to depend on it alone, to adapt to it in all ways accordingly, would be to diverge with the greater universe, the source of our own life and being. The question is whether to learn to live with earnest, open questions concerning spiritual realities, to seek insight into the greater whole, and take part in it in freedom ; or to separate ourselves from it, at risk of becoming lost.
On the path of our development, there is a threshold that protects us from entering the spiritual world unprepared. On the one side of this threshold is the world of physical objects with which we're familiar, including our own physical bodies ; on the other a world of spiritual beings ; and also there, our own past thoughts, deeds and experiences and those of others, not lost, but preserved for all time.
We experience here a "guardian", a spiritual gatekeeper, who meets us in the form of all we have become in our earthly lives for the best - and also all we have not become, have done and not done for the worse - manifest as a single imposing being, an image of ourselves as we truly are. This same being shows to us that which is the very best in us, and that which shocks us, makes us ashamed and even terrified.
In this lecture Rudolf Steiner observes that in training for initiation, the whole of our humanity is prepared, so that this meeting is without harm. From this point forward the guardian will accompany us always in our awareness, both comforting us part at our progress, and showing us indelibly what remains to be done.
Approaching the guardian without such training, however, brings intense awareness of shortcoming, a sense of warning of what lacks in us, different in kind in different groupings of human beings. For those in the West, in English speaking peoples particularly, intense awareness arises of sickness and death, and of all things that intensify these processes ; and the need to learn and do what heals. For Central and Eastern European peoples not schooled for initiation on the universal human path, the encounter raises an excruciating experience of doubt, and a burning awareness of the need for truth in all matters of thinking, and of handling of facts. For the Eastern human being, especially the Russian peoples, the awareness that arises on approaching the Guardian is of the destructive and corrosive effects of selfishness, and the profound need for brotherhood, for attention to the needs of others, as if for oneself.
To summarize : discussion of successive cultural ages "(epochs") in this lecture highlight the changing consciousness of humanity over long periods of time. In the course of history, our deepening bond to the earthly and physical has absorbed our attention, so to speak, distracted it compellingly from the spiritual world from which it came - for a time completely. This path has made us richly competent in the physical, earthly realm - and endowed us with freedom.
A new access to the spiritual in ourselves and the universe has now become possible, and there exists training by which it can be attained, in a healthy and harmonious way. But it can also happen that this new possibility is missed ; and for our trajectory into the physical to overshoot. The mindset of materialism can blind us, both to our own nature, and that of the universe. Error can in this case only increase - exponentially - in our relationships with our world, with other human beings and with ourselves. We cannot keep all of this from ourselves forever, and it is such things the Guardian reflects to us, with shocking, terrifying force.
Awareness of these phenomena gives the two exercises here introduced context, and highlights their value in times that in many ways, are becoming more dark. Hopefully, these clarifications will make them more accessible, and the way to them more direct.
Next in series : Social and Antisocial Forces in the Human Being
Share this page
with friends !
with friends !