A Quest for a Pictorial Understanding of Anthroposophy - … Reflections … Images … Impulses ...
I remember the starting day of the conference; I was approaching the Goetheanum in the midst of a rain storm. This was quite an experience, as all the other times I have been there, the sun was always high in the sky. I stepped towards the main entrance, I gazed at the Goetheanum and a clear thought arose: This will be a valuable experience!
As I entered the Goetheanum I was warmly - dare I say fondly - greeted by Nina at the reception. It was like I came back home! I glanced over the schedule and went to register with the wonderful people who were waiting for us in the Schreinerei. What a meaningful experience it was to hold the conference there, especially as we neared the 100-year commemoration of Rudolf Steiner’s passing.
From the start, the energy and artistic intention were palpable. I, for one, came especially for the opportunity to approach Anthroposophy in an artistic, new way so that I can further develop and share this experience with my friends back in Romania.
Why an artistic approach and not solely a thinking one? As we delve deeper and deeper into our relationship with the world, which is a must, we also become more reliant the connected to the machines that we build. It is a normal route, as we are creators, and they are our creations. The problem that I have found in this relation is that we mostly create only by using our thinking, our intellectual cold thinking. This has created a world around us that primarily appeals mostly to this intellectual force and way of thinking and this in turn seems to atrophy our senses. Reflecting on the fact that our feeling realm must permeate our thinking – enlivening it so that our thoughts become less rigid and more flexible –it was clear to me that we indeed need a pictorial quality in approaching and understanding Anthroposophy.
The first day brought just that, in the form of “The Idea of Freedom - I am the Night Full of Colors to Come” a play using new light instruments, my very reason for coming here, they brought a special quality of color! These new instruments, developed by Nathaniel Williams, embody precisely the kind of practical innovation I was seeking: how the artistic spirit of man can work with new technologies to bring forth artistic beauty- not through digitalized color that must be projected by a computer. These instruments requite the active work of a human being. Someone must understand the need of the moment and act upon it. In this practice, changes are continuous and not sequential. Man is part of the artistic process; his soul and expertise are invaluable and not just his planned thinking. This work has elevated the entire experience of eurythmy and speech and made it a true time art. I feel that this is what technology should bring: a deeper and more profound experience of what it is to be a human being. This first day delighted the engineer and researcher in me, reigniting my enthusiasm for the arts. My inner Waldorf child started playing once again.
The whole conference experience was accompanied by the wonderful musical work, led by Anna Stronski, that all the participants were a part of. The constant presence of music transformed what could have been a purely intellectual experience, adding fluidity and harmony. It brought strangers, some 50 of us, together through singing and rhythmic movement.
As we started the second day, Andreas Schmitt brought forward an eye-opening exercise of thinking. This helped us better feel and understand how we can go from the intellectual soul towards the consciousness soul in our thinking process. Using cards with excerpts from “The Philosophy of Freedom,” we shared objective insights with a partner. Each day, a new partner—seemingly brought to us by destiny—helped us experience thinking as a process rather than as a rigid algorithm.
These exercises laid the foundation for the core part of my conference experience: the creative working groups! Here we had the opportunity to go from thinking to willing, and experience what we could bring into the world when we refine our thinking as an organ of perception. This is what I felt happening in our group. Here I must say that Rik ten Cate has helped me refine my inner experience of what the process of thinking is and how you can approach it in a more pictorial way - not as set in stone, or as an antenna dish, but rather as a living process.
This process of sculpting, of working with the mineral kingdom, has once again that we as human beings are all artists. We had to do a work that started from thinking, going through the process of imagination, afterwards starting from this we had to silence our inner, in my own experience, ‘highway’ of thoughts and listen to what the stone was telling us – to work with inspiration. This meant that we weren’t just working with a rock, but with beings that wanted to manifest themselves into the world and that it could only happen with our help. Through this, I understood better what Rudolf Steiner said in “the spirit has to work in a form”. As the sculpting work began, the process of thinking and the inspiration of the stone started to shine and I knew where and how to work in the material so that the vision, which was alive, could have a form in the stone, while, at the same time, it came from an objective part of the spiritual world.
Afterwards, this understanding was even further refined through the workshop that Rik gave us, in understanding the way applying a force on the process of thinking – within its boundless - actually gives the opportunity for the outer to become the inner and vice versa – this artistic and easy to apply way of understanding will be surely used by me as a basis for a more profound understanding of programming languages and how we as human beings interact with computers and Artificial Intelligence.
I must say that the work in the other two working groups was also wonderful as we experienced them in our “Weaving of the Working Groups” session. Collaborators from the workshops wove together all our experiences into one wonderful performance. This is where our working together through singing and movement came into play, as we put together separate experiences into one that seamlessly followed its own path.
As a final thought I would say that the experience of these days served their goal- to rekindle the spirit in those who have participated and in turn through them of the anthroposophical communities participants returned to. This rekindling brings forward an enlivened process of thinking along with new practical tools that can be applied to the world as it is today!