The Social World as Mystery Center: The Social Vision of Anthroposophy

By Harrie Salman

We can be inspired by spiritual beings in social life. How does this come about? People used to receive such inspiration in places known as "mystery centers," where contact with spiritual beings took place through initiation. This was a process wherein the individual received training that would open the so-called organs of perception, or chakras. In his latest book, The Social World as Mystery Center, Dutch philosopher Harrie Salman outlines the steps a person must take in his or her development to enhance social life. In a time of extreme polarization, Salman explains that we need to meet others with great warmth. We must resist the temptation to force our opinions on those who cling to already-thought thoughts and demand that others think, speak and act the way they do. People need to come together and support each other. Encounters must be met with genuine love for the other. In this book Salman guides us through steps we can take to build communities and cooperate with others as we travel together on a new path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736316504

Book preview

PROLOGUE

In the early hours of January 1, 1923 the Dutch physician Ita Wegman (1876-1943) stood next to Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the inaugurator of the spiritual science of Anthroposophy, while the first Goetheanum burned to the ground.³ A picture of Steiner as she had never seen him before arose in her during this dramatic event. She saw that he, who had always been there for others, was standing very alone. Since then Wegman carried this picture in her soul and decided to put herself entirely at the service of his mission.

Out of this union of souls, a question germinated in her that gave him the opportunity to initiate a renewal of spiritual life. This was a question concerning new mysteries, new ways to consciously connect with the spiritual world. This question is relevant for everybody now. Rudolf Steiner developed a new vision that shows how we can become conscious creators of a new social life and a new culture. This vision is still hardly recognized in its universal importance. It is to the credit of Dieter Brüll, an expert on fiscal law and social questions, to have shown in his book The Mysteries of Social Encounters – The Anthroposophical Social Impulse, originally published in 1984, how this vision came to unfold in Steiner’s life.⁴

This vision makes it clear that spiritual experiences and insights are not only a personal matter, but can also arise in encounters and cooperation with others. In our present era we can be inspired by spiritual beings in social life. The places where individuals used to receive such inspirations are called mystery centers. In the cultures of Antiquity these were temple complexes and other holy places. Preparation for contact with spiritual beings took place through initiation, in which organs of supersensible perception were opened that in ancient India were called chakras.

For centuries there were no more places of initiation in Europe, but since the beginning of the 20th century it has been possible again to communicate with spiritual beings. This can happen in a conscious way, not only in meditation but also in social life. Thus the social world itself becomes a mystery center. This requires a new awareness of the connection of spiritual and social life. The awakening of this awareness was the goal of a renewal process that Steiner wanted to initiate during the important conference at Christmastime in 1923-24, at which time the Anthroposophical Society was re-established. In doing so, he opened up the perspective of working together on a spiritual culture based on a conscious relationship with the spiritual world. This work needs the support of a new social life and the creation of communities.

Steiner expected that millions of people would connect with this renewal movement and that at the end of the 20th century a certain culmination of Anthroposophical work would be reached. During the aforementioned conference he therefore called on the members of the Anthroposophical Society, who had problems with each other, to work together. However, this did not happen, and as a result this conference had failed for him. Steiner died already in 1925, and the General Anthroposophical Society fell apart in 1935. In 1960 most of the conflicts were settled, but Anthroposophy was only to some extent able to fulfil its role as a cultural factor and to spiritualize our way of thinking in all areas of life. Nevertheless, millions of people became acquainted with Waldorf pedagogy, Anthroposophical medicine, biodynamic agriculture and other cultural innovations resulting from Anthroposophy.

Work on a spiritual culture continues in our time also by people who have no connection with the General Anthroposophical Society. This Society, which in 2017 had around 45,000 members worldwide, faces the challenge of renewing itself in such a way that it can fulfil its assigned role in the renewal of culture. This involves learning from the past and discovering the significance of the social impulse of Anthroposophy, which was not understood a century ago.

In recent decades new professions have been developing that connect spiritual and social impulses. They are social, therapeutic and artistic professions that, in the first place, help support people on their individual path of development, make the threads and knots of their destiny visible and help them accept their life’s challenges. And secondly, support people who want to realize new forms of association and cooperation with others as well as new social structures in their social environment. These new professions are concerned with uniting people with their destiny, ordering destiny that has come into disarray, regenerating life forces, rebalancing soul forces, structuring organizations, solving conflicts and healing social relationships. Developments in the fields of biography work, counseling, artistic therapies, social threefolding and organization consultancy are the first beginnings of these new spheres of work. In line with this lies a new way of dealing with money, labor and land, a just order of the world and a moral use of technology.

Since 1971 my path through Anthroposophy led me from old to new mysteries. It began with Rudolf Steiner’s book, Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity, which I discovered while exploring the Greek and Egyptian mysteries. Over the years I began to perceive how new mysteries are enacted between people in everyday life.

The first version of this book was written in 1992 in the Dutch language, with the title Het beeld van de ander [The Image of the Other Person]. After the publication of the German edition in 1994, it was translated by enthusiastic readers into Czech, English, Hebrew and Russian. The English edition, published in 1999, is still widely read, and for this reason a revised edition appears after 21 years. The first edition was written for people connected with Anthroposophy who were looking for the regeneration of the Anthroposophical impulses. This new edition aims at a larger readership that is interested in Rudolf Steiner’s social ideas. His thoughts on community building as a path towards a conscious connection with the spiritual world are still highly relevant.

These thoughts are in fact relevant for everybody. Anthroposophy is a new spiritual impulse for humanity, an impulse that is larger than what has come to life in the Anthroposophical world. It is a new form of consciousness about who we are as human beings and how we can realize our spiritual potential. For a century, Anthroposophy has lived as an impulse in the higher consciousness of all people, but a language that can be understood by every present-day human being and an openness to the spiritual world are necessary to bring it down into daily consciousness.

A new spirituality needs time to develop and it needs appropriate social forms to manifest itself in initiatives, groups and institutions. Rudolf Steiner created a social vision to make this possible, but that was not properly understood a century ago. This vision is oriented towards the future of a humanity that wants to once more connect with spiritual beings and apply their inspirations in social life.

The renewal of culture begins on a small scale, in the family, in education, in a conscious way of living, eating, dealing with our health and nature, and in discovering the spiritual dimensions of life. On a larger scale, it is about transforming our materialistic culture into a spiritual culture and about creating a humane society that treats the earth responsibly. What started a century ago as an impulse for renewal, and from the 1960s onwards has moved youth around the world, is now returning in our age of social inequality, global refugee flows, climate change and epidemics as tasks which no one can neglect.

As a Dutchman I would like to make some remarks about the role of Dutch Anthroposophy in this process of renewal. Ever since the late Middle Ages, the inhabitants of the western part of the country, which lies below sea level, have been forced to work together to take care of the dikes. The protection of the low lands gave rise to a model of cooperation, in which all relevant people can participate and decide in consultations. In this way, the reclamation of physical land has transformed into the building of new land in social life. This might be regarded as a special mission of the Netherlands. In social life we work with etheric forces, we connect people’s life energies.

This forms the historical background of the work for social threefolding in the Netherlands, which was developed by many Anthroposophists, among them Dieter Brüll, the author of the book on the Anthroposophical Social Impulse. We also see this mission in the work of the NPI Institute for Organizational Development, founded in 1954 by Bernard Lievegoed together with a circle of organizational advisors, and in the work of the prominent NPI staff members Lex Bos, author of books dealing with social problems, and Adriaan Bekman, in 2005 founder of the IMO, the International Institute for Human and Organizational Development.

The Dutch Anthroposophical Society is also aware that in social life we are building new land in the etheric. The focus of the work of its board is etheric organizing: supporting people with their initiatives and connecting these initiatives with each other. It is an art to create together the substance and the temporary forms that fit the active formative power of an initiative. This modelling and transforming of social forms is a social art that needs to be practiced continuously. The center of the Society is not the board, but the initiatives of its members. In this way the intentions that Rudolf Steiner connected with working on a new culture in 1923 become visible again.

The starting point for this work is the initiative community of active people who meet each other in inspiring member groups. This is the Anthroposophical Society that Steiner wanted to establish in 1923, but which disappeared from the consciousness of its members after his death. A community of initiators needs the support from a board that takes on the facilitating tasks that Steiner wanted to place in the General Anthroposophical Society. Due to a lack of awareness, the latter Society also took over the tasks of the first Society, while Steiner wanted to differentiate their tasks. As the third part of his threefold vision, Steiner saw his School for Spiritual Science, a workshop for connecting with the spiritual world in new mysteries. It is my conviction that this original threefold social structure is necessary for the spiritual work of the future.

INTRODUCTION

This book is concerned with the Anthroposophical Social Impulse and Rudolf Steiner’s intentions with it. He foresaw that from the middle of the 20th century onwards the processes of social disintegration would speed up. In the meantime, we can see how social traditions are losing their strength. It is becoming increasingly difficult to live with each other without conflict. New forms of community building are necessary, as well as a new spiritual culture to counter the growing social isolation and materialism. Steiner saw the need for new, healthy social conditions in society and for a spiritual revolution within traditional spiritual life. This revolution was to lead to new mysteries as a source of a new spiritual culture.

The 20th century was a most dramatic century, in which the course of history changed completely. Steiner was totally shocked when the First World War broke out in 1914. He knew that it was being prepared, but he thought that it would begin later. His project of spiritual renewal was in danger. This war led to the collapse of Central Europe, and indirectly to the rise of Nazism in 1933. The Second World War led to the decline of European culture and the incorporation of Western Europe in the American World Order.

An economic, scientific and technological development began that overwhelmed humanity with effective forms of consciousness manipulation. While Rudolf Steiner opened the gate to the spiritual world and announced the Second Coming of Christ, his opponents opened the gate to the subconscious world and awoke the dark forces that are connected with the Antichrist. Steiner had expected that he would live into the 1940s, but he had to leave his earthly body in 1925.

To enable a new blossoming of Anthroposophy, we have to contemplate Steiner’s spiritual and social intentions. When we do this, it is good to realize that young people today have another connection with the spiritual world than the older generations for whom this relationship was still mediated by a church or by an institution such as the Anthroposophical Society. The spiritual life of the younger generations is much more personal, and for many it is limited to a search for the meaning of life in a world of technology that continually lures our consciousness into new prisons of manipulation and addiction.

Rudolf Steiner was able to speak freely about Christ in his time. This is no longer a matter of course for many people who have no connection with the traditional churches. For Steiner, Christ is greater than Christianity. He is there for all mankind. Steiner spoke of him as the Spirit of the Sun and called him an avatar. Those who have seen the film Avatar are familiar with this concept. It comes from Hinduism and it refers to a high spiritual being who can work through a highly developed human being. For Steiner, Christ was the highest spiritual being who connected with the highly developed man Jesus to bring a mission of love among mankind and to reconnect people with their higher Self. When Steiner spoke of the Christ impulse, he meant the impulse of love.

The first chapter of this book presents a picture of Rudolf Steiner as a human being in the culture and society of his time. As a philosopher of freedom he devoted himself at the beginning of the 20th century to the spiritual development of the proletariat in Berlin. At the same time he lectured in the German Theosophical movement as an authority on Christian spirituality. The second chapter describes the Anthroposophical Social Impulse. The third chapter is about the transformation of an old spiritual consciousness into a new spirituality in which a conscious connection with the world of the spirit becomes possible. The fourth chapter clarifies the vision of the social world having become a mystery center in which the spirit is directly active between people. We enter a new stage of consciousness where we can have spiritual experiences in social life and can experience and understand everything that happens in social life as spiritual reality. The fifth chapter asks how modern spiritual consciousness can lead to the creation of a new communities in which people can develop spiritually inspired initiatives. The General Anthroposophical Society can support this process and connect them.

CHAPTER I

RUDOLF STEINER

1. Central Europe as Spiritual Home

Spiritual movements need a channel, a stream in which they can flow. At the beginning of the 20th century Central European culture provided a channel for Anthroposophy. It was alive with a spirituality based on the freedom of each individual, and an image of humanity that distinguished between body, soul and spirit. It had a social component as well, since the Central European consciousness of freedom had developed the social forms necessary for its full unfolding. It was part of an order of freedom that inspired people to create their social life out of their consciousness of rights.

In its development through a millennium, Central Europe had been the spiritual home of a great variety of spiritual streams like Rosicrucianism, the Czech Hussites, German Protestantism, Romanticism and Idealist Philosophy. Movements developing new social forms, as in the medieval free cities, the Swiss Confederation and the Dutch Republic were closely related to them. A spirit of freedom was very much alive, trying to overcome the old principles of power and providing the possibility for a new political life based on the equality of free human beings.

In the early 20th century the spiritual heritage of Romantic and Idealistic times, as well as esoteric Christianity, still lived in the souls of many. When the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner founded a new spiritual science he was able to connect to this heritage. His Anthroposophy embraced the entire Central European culture and renewed it by offering a path of inner development to everyone willing to become creative and develop soul and spirit. This creative activity had earlier been the privilege of genius. However, it was hardly possible for Steiner to connect to the social tradition of Central Europe. The consciousness of freedom and the social radicalism of the earlier Central Europeans had already vanished in the German bourgeoisie of his time.

In the 20th century the spiritual heritage of Central Europe dissociated itself from its geographical context and became global. Everywhere on earth free people discover that Central European consciousness, and Anthroposophy in particular, represent a new stage in the general spiritual development of mankind, and that this consciousness unfolds where spiritually open-minded people pursue spiritual interests. Islands of culture arise once they are able to develop new social forms where the fount of a new spiritual consciousness can renew the social and spiritual life of our time.

Creating a new spiritual culture, a way of life in which we over-come the materialism of our time, is a difficult task, but in small and larger communities this has already begun. In every community we must consciously shape a social life in which we, as free people, organize our cultural, political and economic conditions. The Central European tradition points to a social circle in which all are equal and have the same rights and duties. It is the idea of the forum of citizens, the Round Table, where all take part in political life.

Rudolf Steiner is the pioneer of a new spiritual culture. He loosened Central European culture from the background in which it had developed, and presented it as a level of