An Introduction to Anthroposophy

The text below is a literal transcription of the spoken video text.

From various sides, I have been asked whether I could also record videos in German. And one motivation for this was that Germans do not like to be confronted with subtitles. Well, we Dutch have nothing else. We always have movies and everything with subtitles, but in German, people are used to something different. And I will gladly do it. Watch Video on YouTube

From various sides, I have been asked whether I could also record videos in German. And one motivation for this was that Germans do not like to be confronted with subtitles. Well, we Dutch have nothing else. We always have movies and everything with subtitles, but in German, people are used to something different. And I will gladly do it.

I also, in 2020, when I recorded my first videos, I also started them in German because I know that in German-speaking society, there is more enthusiasm for what I have to say – but of course, that is also a much larger number of inhabitants than in the Netherlands. But then there was a comment that, as a Dutchwoman, I was not speaking my own language, so I switched to Dutch and continued that way.

But now the question came: Can you make videos in German and really bring Anthroposophy more specifically? Yes, I will gladly do that, and of course, it is clear that German is not my native language. I was born in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is, of course, the most beautiful and freest city in the world; there is no nationality there at all, I believe. So, you can be born there, and then, of course, you are Dutch, but that does not shape you so strongly.

But German remains, of course, a foreign language for me, and by now, it has more or less become my second language, so let's try.

I want to speak to people who long to understand the meaning of life, who long for hope for the future, who long for love among each other. And one could summarize these three – and of course, there are many more longings – in one word, and that would be Anthroposophy.

If one has to live in this world – and we all do, with more or less pleasure – then I cannot imagine anything other than that, in every human life, there comes a moment, a series of moments, where one thinks: What for, actually?

Most of us have luxury in life. We can work. We have free time. We can travel. We can go to a restaurant. We can attend concerts. We can watch politics. We can rejoice and we can get angry. Perhaps we are not so wealthy that we can do all of this, then we have other pleasures that give life a certain meaning. But still, there must be a moment in every human life when one asks: Yes, what for, actually?

We all share the same fate here on Earth, namely death. That is clear to all of us; there is no difference, there is no one who gets more or less than the other, or the other more than the one. We all have the same fate, and there are people who become aware of this early on – that far away, still in the distance, there lies the moment when this life on Earth will come to an end.

One can find all kinds of possible solutions to numb oneself to this, and one can also look it straight in the eye and say: Yes, that’s it, and in the meantime, I live as well and as beautifully as I can, and if nothing remains, then, well, then nothing remains.

I can believe that, I can fear that, I can assume to know it. But is there not, in every human being, a doubt about whether it is really true that existence completely ends with death?

We can ask ourselves that: Do I believe that life continues, or does it really end with death? And what kind of feelings do such thoughts give me? Do I even dare to go so far in my thinking and feeling that I imagine it?

Then, in life, fate strikes. Then comes the death of other people in our lives.

Do the questions not then arise: What is this all about? Are we like the plants, that we have a time of life only to wither again? Are we like the animals, that we enter existence and live out our instincts until the end comes? Or is the human being something else after all, a different kind of living being than the other living beings in nature?

Do such questions not arise in every human being? Maybe one pushes them away again immediately, maybe they become tormenting questions, or one searches for answers to these questions in books, in religions, in spiritual masters.

We see that in the 20th century, a great wave of spirituality came over Europe and America, and this spirituality comes mainly from the East. We have embraced Eastern mysticism in our regions, and we actually still do. There are countless books we can read about the meaning of life, the value of life, the way we can live our lives. And a great comfort comes from this mysticism when one engages with it.

It is the same when one learns and practices mindfulness – that one receives a sense of comfort. But does one also truly gain an understanding of the meaning of life?

In Buddhism, there is – probably a specific school, I do not know exactly, but I do know that in Buddhism, there is a teaching that life on Earth is suffering and that one can only free oneself from it by performing certain exercises through which egoism in the soul is completely overcome and one no longer has the obligation to keep returning to Earth and suffering again.

But there are also many schools in which the focus is actually only on this life now, on learning to position ourselves differently within ourselves, so that the sources of suffering and suffering itself are gradually overcome.

I have read some books, or actually many books, on this subject, started with Krishnamurti, but later read other books, and it always becomes clear that one should more or less withdraw from the confusion and chaos of one’s own thought life. And when one does that, one enters a sphere where one can observe as a spectator what this realm of suffering within oneself actually is. And when one gets to know that, one gradually reaches a state of great inner peace and can fully live in the now.

Has one then found the meaning of life? Has one then understood what it actually is? Yes, insofar as one then knows: Death can teach me that I must truly live life. Now, not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, but now – with all the fire, enthusiasm, love, and so on, that I have. That is, of course, wonderful.

But have I then… is that the meaning of life? And is that what death means for us? For me, that is not enough.

I have searched and searched in my life, when I was still young, for the meaning of life that ends with death. And when one stands in the world like that – and I have been working with Anthroposophy daily in meditation and study for about 40 years now – when one stands in life like that and looks around, it is truly something that continues to amaze me: that people everywhere seem to live their lives just like that and do not find Anthroposophy.

Do they not have the question about the meaning of life and death? That is not possible, that they do not have it, because every human being has questions about their fate – and our shared fate is, after all, death. It cannot be that people do not have such questions.

They have them, and yet they do not come to this spiritual science, which can truly, scientifically, and rationally explain to us what life on Earth means and what death has to tell us—how it is a threshold, a gateway, not an end.

This spiritual science, which can tell us what can be experienced beyond the gateway and what we can do so that we can truly understand and deepen life on Earth. And so that we can truly fulfill these longings that we carry within us.

The question is—and it is a burning question: How can it be that the human being, who is human, does not come to a wisdom of the human being? That the human being does not transform these many longings into an Anthroposophy, into a wisdom that is specific to us as human beings?

With this question, I would like to conclude, and next time I will go further into this question, and I hope that I will be able to record a video weekly.

An Introduction to Anthroposophy by Mieke Mosmuller