Knowledge of the human being
The Education Section’s research week on the anthroposophical image of the human being, which was held at the Goetheanum from 30 September to 4 October, was about creating out of nothing.
This year’s research week on Rudolf Steiner’s image of the human being took its cue from his lecture of 17 June 1909 (GA 107) in connection with the ninth Class Lesson. Rudolf Steiner asks how the evolution of the world and of humanity interrelate. Using the example of the plant world, he demonstrates that plants develop physically and etherically and then «repeat themselves» (inclusion). Humans develop their physical and life bodies until they reach puberty, or what Steiner calls «earth maturity». Like humans, animals develop their soul body, but then stop there (evolution), while humans still have the possibility of developing their ‹I›. This means they can create new things that did not exist before.
Creation from nothing
This creating from nothing is something quite concrete. When we see two people together and we rejoice in this, our joy is something entirely new, something that was not there before. Their being together could be karmic, but our joy isn’t. It is the Christ impulse that makes it possible for us to continuously create something new in our soul.
For this to happen, it is necessary for the constituent members of our organization to change. Rudolf Steiner gives us the following image: When we have a car, we need to change a tyre after a while, and then another one. Once we have replaced more and more parts the day will come when nothing is left of the original car. It has become a new car. The members of our organization need to change in the same way by the time we reach the Vulcan era.
This research week took place for the first time in the 1990s, supported by Heinz Zimmermann who was then head of the Education Section at the Goetheanum. The members of this research group have worked in the way proposed by Rudolf Steiner in the third lecture of Meditatively Acquired Knowledge of the Human Being (in GA 302a, Balance in Teaching): studying, meditating, remembering: then inspirations for the teaching practice would begin to flow. Luckily, Christof Wiechert as well as Florian Osswald and Claus-Peter Röh continued with this research work.