A school of life

The Goetheanum Leadership held its retreat from 31 March to 2 April under special conditions. Those Section leaders who were unable to be at the Goetheanum participated online. Prompted by the present situation, the Goetheanum Leadership decided to focus on three areas and invites the members to contribute to and support this work.

---

Humanity is close to an abyss. One global crisis follows after another and it is ever more evident that, if we continue on the same path, it can only lead to disaster. We clearly need to rethink and change direction. How could it come to this? Science and technology are flourishing as never before, celebrating ever new astounding achievements. And yet – we are on the way to rapidly destroy the natural, social and spiritual climate, life, society and the earth.

Consequences of human actions

This dramatic situation poses a unique challenge for our knowledge, insights and actions. We know and are able to do more than ever! But we need knowledge and actions that are different from those that have got us into this situation. (How) can the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science, contribute to this new knowledge and these new skills?

This question was at the centre of the Goetheanum Leadership retreat for which some of its members were present in person, while others joined online. We used the enforced cancellation of important events and the closing of doors to the public to open up inner doors – for deepening and increased cooperation, and above all for the needs of our time and of the world. The questions that moved us were: What does our time ask of us? What does the world ask of us? What is essential now? And what can we do?

The many serious crises of our cultural, political and economic life, of our environment and society are not imposed on us by God or by nature. They result from our decisions and actions. They are consequences of our scientific thinking that only accepts what can be counted and measured, what is material and has become, whilst excluding living, active, spiritual forces.

If it is true that the world gradually becomes how we envision it, then how do we have to think this world, which is as wonderful as it is riddled with crises, so that a better, life-enhancing, human development is possible? What kind of science and practice can support both our future evolution as free and self-determined beings and the evolution of the earth that carries and is part of us?

Work and research tasks

This is where the Goetheanum as a School of Spiritual Science can make essential contributions in the coming years. In focusing on the issues and needs of our time we have identified urgent tasks that we need to work on and research across the Sections. These can be divided into three categories:

A new approach to the earth: We see the earth as a living being. How can we be its partner? What does this mean for farming, for the way we deal with plants and animals, with the climate and natural resources? Who does the earth and all that is in it, above and below it, belong to? Can we develop binding and responsible legal foundations for how we deal with land and soil, with natural and environmental resources? What are appropriate ways of using the earth’s substances? Can we develop an ecological pharmacy?

Understanding and fostering life: Modern science is still trying to understand life through what is dead. But how can life be experienced, known, understood through itself? How can we develop living observation and living thinking? What forms of thinking are suited to life? How can we enliven our tortured language and the words that have lost their essence? Where and how can we experience the living essence of time? How can the arts help us to enliven the way we perceive, think and act? And how can we, on the basis of all this, develop an ensouled understanding of technology, a living technology?

A new solidarity: How can we understand, and practise, mutuality as the basic fabric of life and humanity? Can we develop non-violent ways of dealing with each other and with nature? What does this mean for a future cultural, economic and political life? Is community without power, an economy based on fraternity, possible? Life and knowledge are ultimately always about relations, and relations mean responsibility – responsibility for the cognitive process itself, for what we know of and what we do in the world.

Obligation arising from an extended concept of science

This orientation will guide the Goetheanum Leadership in the coming years. In these apocalyptic times, we see the existence of a School that is committed to an extended concept of science – a concept that does not stop with sensory cognition but is open to an empathetic knowledge of the sub- and supersensory, of life and of the spirit – as both a privilege and an obligation. And we hope for the support and cooperation of a global community of anthroposophically researching individuals who feel connected with the School of Spiritual Science and its Sections.

---

---