From the World Society. Toward 2023

16 Jun From the World Society. Toward 2023

Dear Members and Friends of the Anthroposophical Society in Canada, 

What is biography? We all journey through our waking hours immersed in the flow of our lives. It is only on occasion that life confronts us and we are called to attend to the organizing patterns of this stream of life. We are called to wake. It is then that we have the possibility of seeing through life’s fabric into the principles that guide life’s narrative. Like chapter headings in the book of our lives, these points of consciousness provide us with an orientation to the ‘one’ living this life; the one we call ‘myself’. Unlike our hands or feet that quietly support life, this ‘myself’ has a complex relationship to this body given to it, to dwell in, to unfold itself within.

From the beginning of the 20th century the question of this ‘self’ has become a key for understanding what it is to be human in our time. It gave birth to the whole field of psycho-therapeutic inquiry. This great mystery of the self also stands at the heart of anthroposophy and has been greatly elaborated upon through the wide field of biography work developed out of it. This sphere of research has been central to cultivating an understanding of this self that lives through the narrative of our daily lives.

Also important is the realization that this great gift of earthly life is only one aspect of the fullness of who we are. This ‘totality’ dwells beyond space and time, lending an aspect of itself to incarnation. This ‘greater self’ also has its journey, its biography. It has its existence, one intimately intertwined with the life of ‘myself’. This aspect of our being that does not come into incarnation also has the community to which it belongs. A community that awakens in it impulses for its own evolution, impulses that become part of what slumbers within us as we unfold the narrative of life in incarnation, in space and in time.

For each one of us this journey through life is wondrously unique. Though we may live closely with another, all that unfolds in these interconnected journeys is distinct. This great mystery, though we share our intimate lives with another, these parallel journeys are distinct and separate and often cause pain. Pain that can lead us to want to understand, a longing to know my self. Despite the singularity of our individual lives, all of us considering these words share a pivotal biographical event, standing before anthroposophy’s doorway. For each of us, this event fundamentally altered the configuration of our biographical journeys. The fabric of life leading to this meeting was transformed when we chose to step through that portal. What led us here?

This entity we call anthroposophy, in all of its manifold aspects, has its own existence, a life made present in our world. Its fullness, its full reality, dwells beyond space and time – as does ours. The being of anthroposophy also lends but an aspect of itself to become outwardly present. The Christmas Conference of 1923/24 is that birth point when a profound reality crosses over and enters into the vessel that Rudolf Steiner had prepared for it. As our lives are filled with rhythmic processes that link the self on this side of the threshold with the self on the other side of threshold, so too does this being of anthroposophy have its life rhythms. All of anthroposophy has to do with the highest possibility for humanity whose archetype is inseparable from its impulse. So, of the many rhythms that permeate the life of this vessel for anthroposophy, the most significant is that of this Archetype of Humanity, 33 ⅓ years. From this birth point with the Christmas Conference this great rhythm is fundamental to anthroposophy’s biography, a pulse-beat that has come to a conclusion and new beginning twice in the past century; the pulse-beat that will come to a third resolution at Christmas 2023/24. The great question that stands before us is — what will the new beginning be? How can we turn toward this question?

If we look into the world over this past century, anthroposophy has revealed itself with a complexity difficult to imagine. But is this great flowering but the manifestation of the power of what we have inherited, what comes from the majesty of its birth? Have we spent our inheritance, or is this a point of awakening? Are we being called to apprehend that what has come to fruition in this century has its origins beyond outer manifestation?

The reality that stands behind anthroposophy in the world and the reality that stands behind our incarnated selves, dwell together. It is this intimate relationship between that aspect of the self that is eternal and those beings who care for humanity’s evolution, that has led each of us to this turning point in our lives. So it is this aspect of ourselves that dwells beyond the sense visible world that can guide us toward what now needs to arise in our shared life in anthroposophy. How might we access this guidance?

One of the greatest gifts of anthroposophy is the discovery of a unique community to which we belong.  We are given the possibility of finding a circle of individuals who we can recognize; who we intuitively ‘know’, who karmic necessity has drawn together.

Can we discern among these anthroposophical friends a circle we can deeply trust and commit to work with in a special way – in a way intended to reach through to the relationship between our essential being and the being of anthroposophy? Can we seek for and find this circle? Then, can we commit to work with each other in such a way that we become receptive to what is being asked of us as we approach this new beginning? To do this we can turn to our biographies, not in our accustomed way which leads us to a knowing of the self in incarnation, but to the impulses awakened in the trans-personal self by the Archetype of Humanity. The doorway through our individual biographies to these impulses for the future cannot come out of our individual work, but out of our work with each other. It is through the selfless listening into the hidden patterning of our biography that the other can sense through our biographies to the universal.

This can be taken up by the group as a threefold process. Each member of the group looks to their own biography, attending to signature qualities that can indicate the essence of their impulses for this life. Our earliest memory can have these qualities embedded in it. Having completed this preparatory work, each individual then brings what they have come to while the others in the circle intensely listen, without comment or question, allowing the soul mood of the speaker to dawn within themselves.

To be effective this process needs two distinct aspects. First, the key aspects of our biographical journey before coming to the threshold of anthroposophy. Then, those aspects after ‘recognizing’ anthroposophy, after  entering into the body of anthroposophy. Each individual takes one session to go through this twofold process while the balance of the group takes in what is said, without discussion, without critique. Between each meeting of the group, those who have been listening recall and strengthen their impressions of what they have heard, taking them into their sleep. Then after a time the group gathers again and the next individual shares their twofold process. This repeats itself until all members of the circle have brought both aspects of their biographical preparation.

To intently listen with open warmth, without judgment, becomes a force that allows something of the essential being of the other to bloom within our souls. This process can slowly reveal what lies within the outer manifestation of our biographies, can touch the impulses that are the foundations of our earthly lives. Inseparable from these pre-birth resolves is our interrelationship with those beings who stand behind what has brought anthroposophy into the world. These beings and our own being are intimately interlinked and it is the overlapping at the level of being that we seek through this endeavour.

After each member of the circle has had the opportunity to take this first step, the group can then take a next, much more difficult, critical step. Each individual goes back to the point when anthroposophy became central to their lives and as vividly as possible imagines what their biography would have been without this meeting with anthroposophy. If possible, this can be extended to imagine what the world would now be if Rudolf Steiner had not prepared for anthroposophy to come into the world a century ago. What would the world be without all that has arisen out of anthroposophy?

As with the first part of the exercise, only one person brings their contributions to each meeting, and the balance of the circle inwardly carries what has been brought until the next meeting takes place.

These three steps become an invitation to the future to reveal itself to us. Having completed this threefold process the group can become an open soul space, a ‘listening through’ to what can awaken in us as an ‘after experience’ that prepares us for this new phase in anthroposophy’s biography.

Is this a process that we can recognize? Can enough of us sense that it can become an impulse for movement, inner movement, toward this critical point in time? If so, then in the coming year we can begin to work in these circles across the country and then come together to share what can gradually grow out of this common work. In this way we can turn toward what is asked of us as we approach this new phase in this life that we share. In this way, as we approach this new Christmas event we do so, not out of what we would want the event to be, but out of a resolve to meet what is now needed for the presence of anthroposophy to go into a new century with ever growing affect on our culture and on those who will come into earthly life seeking her.

With warm regards, 

Bert Chase

General Secretary for Canada