| Steeling the Spirit, Michaelmas Address by Dorit Winter Two weeks ago, at our Opening Assembly, I mentioned an exceptional human being who survived Buchenwald concentration camp, and who later said of himself that he had, after frightful deprivation and horror, overcome fear by helping others, and had become, in an odd sort of way, cheerful there. Cheerful! Integral to this story is the accident which this individual, Jacques Lusseyran, had at the age of seven. It robbed him of his eyesight. In his autobiography, And There Was Light, he describes how the light, which had so fascinated him as a young child, became accessible to him again, inwardly, after the accident. Fear was his great enemy. If he was afraid of the unseen, he could now no longer "see." Anger, too, "blinded" him. He had to practice what Rudolf Steiner calls "equanimity" in order to perceive what his eyes could not. Neither the state nor nature can give us individual identity. But Waldorf education can. And this teacher training can, too. And that's because both are rooted in the science of the spirit. Jacques Lusseyran was also rooted in the spirit. That is why in the midst of chaos he could remain centered. In his autobiography, he relates how he learned to "see" again: As I walked along a country road bordered by trees, I could point to each one of the trees by the road, even if they were not spaced at regular intervals. I knew whether the trees were straight and tall, carrying their branches as a body carries its head, or gathered into thickets and partly covering the ground around them. And he continues: This kind of exercise soon tired me out, I must admit, but it succeeded. And the fatigue did not come from the trees, from their number or shape, but from myself. To see them like this I had to hold myself in a state so far removed from old habits that I could not keep it up for very long. I had to let the trees come towards me, and not allow the slightest inclination to move towards them, the smallest wish to know them, to come between them and me. I could not afford to be curious or impatient or proud of my accomplishments. After all, such a state is only what one commonly calls 'attention,' but I can testify that when carried to this point it is not easy. And that is what I really want to talk about today. Jacques Lusseyran could see without eyes because he developed a supersensible capacity for attention, literally, a supersensible capacity for attention. Although his goal was to perceive the sensible world, the power of attention he needed to bring to bear is exactly the same as the one we are required to develop when we engage in the exercises set out in so many different places by Rudolf Steiner. We are asked to proceed, stepwise, toward the building of supersensible capacities, to do what Lusseyran accomplished, namely, to see without eyes. Was Lusseyran's power of attention connected to his capacity for cheerfulness? Our attention spans have become digital. Our children are learning to point and click, and any delay causes impatience. There can be no question that everything modern, digital, cellular and technological has an adverse effect on our concentration. I myself depend on my palm pilot, and I have been able to observe that my memory...uh, what was I saying...? Well, you get the idea. "But where does Michaelmas come in?" I hear you saying. The Michaelmas Verse tells us that, "My will's fiery energy shall steel my spirit's striving, that sense of self springs forth from it, to hold me in myself." So, there is a fiery force within our will, and this force can steel the striving of the spirit, so that we can find ourselves. Lusseyran had found himself before Buchenwald, and because he was so self-reliant, so self-contained, so self-certain, his self could not be destroyed even there. He was able to transcend his circumstances, because he had been practicing to do so since he was a young child. He could see without eyes, he could hear beyond words, and in the worst of circumstances, he could transcend them. His individuality was indivisible. Anthroposophy is nothing if not a path to indivisible individuality, and Michael, whom we are celebrating today, is the spiritual being who gives us the courage to take that path. Does it take courage? Indeed, it does. Rudolf Steiner himself alludes to this very clearly in Chapter 3 of The Threshold of the Spiritual World, one of the texts we study in our teacher training. Man arrives at the recognition and knowledge of a supersensible spiritual world by overcoming certain obstacles.... These obstacles are not apprehended by ordinary consciousness.... The spiritual world, before it is perceived and recognized by the soul, is to the latter, something quite strange and unfamiliar.... The soul may be confronted with the spiritual world and may see in it an absolute void. The soul may feel as though it were looking into an infinite, blank desolate abyss.... The feeling is something like fear and dread, and the soul lives in it without being aware of the fact. For the life of the soul is determined not only by what it knows, but by what is actually present within it, without its knowledge.... A few sentences later, Rudolf Steiner mentions "a materialistic narcotic to deaden the dread of the spiritual world." And he adds: "Materialism as a psychic phenomenon of fear is an important chapter in the science of the soul." So we are caught in a double bind. We are afraid to put on the blindfold which would enable us to learn to see the hidden, supersensible world, and we are blinded more and more to its very existence. Great obstacles, digital and otherwise, are put in our path. Yet, if our will is steeled we can engage in the task of finding our true selves. For that we need focus, attention, concentration, meditation. They constitute the steel. Through them we steel our will. The only thing that distinguishes one who has supersensible perceptions from one who has ordinary consciousness is: Focus, attention, and concentration. Supersensible perceptions go beyond the blindfold of the sensible. We get past our sense perceptions, and we do so by concentration. Many exercises meant to help us along the path of spiritual science have to do with stripping the essential from the unessential, the significant from the insignificant, the eternal from the transitory. We will not find our true self, if we are not looking for what is eternal in us. We will be distracted by our present condition, whether it is wonderful or awful. Unlike Lusseyran, we have eyes. But, we are distracted by them. That doesn't mean we should deliberately blind ourselves. The time for going into a dark cell and praying all day is past. Today we are asked to be in life, and yet to be aware of a different dimension of being. And that awareness requires first and foremost the desire for such awareness. The will's fiery energy needs to be steeled. All these works of art (alluding to the display, in the new Festival Hall, of some sixty prints depicting Michael or St. George and the Dragon), spanning 1500 years or so, show the will's fiery energy, the white horse, being steeled by the human being, so that the sword of light can overcome the dragon of materialism. That sword of light is the light of concentration. It is the inner light which Lusseyran trained himself to use. And it is the inner light we too can begin to access. Not with the goal of clairvoyance, which means, literally, clear seeing, but with the goal of finding the strength to wake up to what is presently hidden. Michael is waiting for us to wake up, and once we do, he will inspire us with resolve. But we have to do the work. It is daily work. And it is of such awesome importance, that at his very last public talk, given at Michaelmas in 1924, Rudolf Steiner said that if only 4 times 12 human beings take up the Michael thought, we will then be able to look up to the light which will spread itself though humanity in the future by means of the Michael stream and Michael deeds. He speaks of Michael thoughts, and of a Michael-loyal heart. He speaks of a Michael garment, namely light itself, and he says, if we are truly to understand this spiritual being whom we call Michael, then we must realize that he is the Christ herald, the Christ-messenger. This is not the entity which any denomination or confession or church connects itself with. This is, rather, an entity that transcends religion and is there for all of humanity. And the messenger, the visage of that very high Sun Being, is Michael, who has stern demands, but who, when we find in ourselves the will's fire-force, can help us harness that force, and enable us to hold the reins steadily on the path toward greater concentration and new insights. Then those insights will give us the strength to foster Waldorf education, which, as you recall from our reading in The Younger Generation, is the chariot which will carry Michael into our civilization. |
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