Initiation: The Observer

Last time I spoke about initiation and about self-education. And I said that in ancient times the pupils were chosen, whereas in our present time the human being chooses himself. Now it is the case that I usually limit my videos to about twenty minutes, because I do not really find this medium suitable for longer expositions. The disadvantage, however, is that one can then only say very little, and that what one says can easily take on a somewhat extreme character.

Free Thinking

After the video from last time with the title “Independent Judgment,” I naturally received reactions. These are not only under the video, but I also receive emails with reactions from time to time. And one of those pointed out to me the fact that if you are somewhat older and you look back at your youth, you would actually have to say: in those days people were still much more dependent on the judgment in which they were brought up than in the present time. We have in fact become much freer to venture to think something that has, for example, a revolutionary character. And by that I do not mean revolution in the big sense. Rather, revolution in the sense that you really want something different from what is happening. To think that is something that in modern times actually becomes more and more possible, when you think of the 1950s of the last century.

Initiation: Self-Education!

Last time I spoke about initiation, and I would like to continue with that this time. One can, of course, really never finish speaking about it. The time in which we live is a very special one when we relate ourselves to initiation, for in our time we can truly decide for ourselves whether we want to follow the path of initiation, and that is really something special. For we must imagine, when we think of ancient times in which there were mysteries where one could be initiated; there the pupils were truly chosen for it, and they had to undergo difficult trials in order to be allowed to remain. The initiation itself was prepared in the school, but when the pupil, male or female, was ready so that the initiation could be carried out, then it was carried out upon the pupils.

Independent Judgement

I am sitting wonderfully in the autumn sun between two rain showers and reflect on the past week, when there were elections in the Netherlands. They brought a great surprise, and yes, that of course then leads to the question: how can it be that there comes a result that stands so far from the polls and is such a great surprise to everyone? What has actually happened that caused things to change so much in the Dutch population in such a short time? And it is not so much about this specific case for me, but more about a general question: how that actually works in our time.

The Angels in the Life Body

A few weeks ago, I had begun speaking about a first possible scenario that we could imagine in order to offer a counterbalance, possibly, to all the other scenarios that exist. And at that time, I read aloud a passage from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner. He says that it is truly time that the human being in his time, and then all the more so in ours, realises that the sensory reality is not the whole reality, and that we must become aware that a spiritual reality lies at the foundation, we might say, forming the sensory reality, and that one could learn to know this reality — this spiritual reality — by studying spiritual science. That is of the greatest importance in our time, and that should actually be the first scenario: that one imagines a world in which people at least in large numbers no longer stand still at what the material has to offer but are also truly permeated by the fact that there is a spiritual reality.

Initiation

In the previous videos about anthroposophy, I have tried to explain something about the threefold and fourfold nature of the human being, about karma and reincarnation, and the last time about heart thinking. And today I would like to try to say something about the path of initiation that Rudolf Steiner has shown us.

It is clear that he found – and probably every initiate will find that– that one must first study. And that shows itself in the fact that, in the books about spiritual science, for example the books “Theosophy” and also “An Outline of Esoteric Science”, Rudolf Steiner first gives study material in them, and only at the very end describes the path of initiation.

Screen Children – Raising children in the age from 7-14 years

Years ago, I wrote a little book about the upbringing of the child, from birth, or perhaps even from conception, up to the seventh year of life, up to the change of teeth. I found in the poet Novalis a sentence that more or less expresses what I wanted to say in that little book, namely: The child is love that has become visible. Beautiful! So I gave that little book this title. That was years ago, and of course the question has often come up: Can you not also write something about the child in the second stage of development, namely from the change of teeth up to puberty? I have now tried to do that, and what I always “do” when I begin writing a text is that I actually first think about: what is now really the core of what I want to say, what I think is important.

Michael

Michael. We are living toward the feast of Michael on the 29th of September. And I must say that before I got to know anthroposophy, I did not know this feast. I mainly got to know it at the Waldorf school, because the children went there. And of course also from the work of Rudolf Steiner. It might occur to you that Rudolf Steiner himself initiated this feast, but that is absolutely not the case. It is a very well-known feast, which is actually celebrated across a very large range of religions. Also really on the 29th of September.

Heart Thinking

In anthroposophy we have a kind of confusion with regard to thinking. Thinking in our time is of course entirely abstract, and we can sometimes also have the feeling that it is also heartless. And that leads to us feeling a longing to get beyond thinking to something that is again filled with the heart. Or perhaps without noticing it, that we do not get beyond it, but that we slip back into something that belongs to the past. And that is what I would like to try to make somewhat clearer today. Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, and one comes to know with the help of thinking. And that is, I believe, also something that does not make anthroposophy so popular, that we must apply our thinking strongly for it.

The Angels in the Soul

A number of weeks ago I made a proposal that we, as people who have different views on how the world should develop in the future, on the world and on humanity, that we, as such people, should become concrete in our thoughts. Perhaps we could also write down how we would then imagine it. Then I was asked to become somewhat more concrete myself about this, and immediately I knew what is the most important thing from a spiritual point of view. The most important thing is that we, as human beings, increasingly realize that what happens with the world, that world development and the development of humanity, is not only a physically visible, experienceable event, but that it is also a spiritual event. And that is of course something that is not at all clear to very many people, but to very many people it is. And we could bring much more into consciousness that what we see happening in the world, we do not only take it as it presents itself to us at first as visible and audible, but that we also try to view it from a spiritual standpoint. And then of course you can say: well yes, I cannot do that at all, because I do not concretely perceive the spiritual aspect of world events. Well, that is not necessary either, but what we can do is to immerse ourselves in the spiritual science that already exists. And that is anthroposophy. Rudolf Steiner in his time took great pains to provide a spiritual vision of the world events of that period. And that is still extraordinarily instructive.