What is a child?

During this period of many seminars, I am giving short impressions of some of them. In Driebergen we spent five evenings studying the wonderful lectures of Rudolf Steiner about the healthy development of the human being, through a healthy education. This Wednesday we developed thoughts and exercises based on the seventh lecture. Here, the child's development before the seventh year is discussed. In such young children we have to learn to see that their etheric body is at work forming the physical body. We don't have to be clairvoyant to perceive this; it is a matter of conceiving the ideas and learning to watch a child while being 'permeated" by these ideas. The idea brings with it the possibility to see with full consciousness, what was seen before also, but unconsciously.

In this lecture the idea is given of the etheric body that forms the physical body and that then becomes free for other activities, in three great steps. In the first period of around two and a half years the etheric body forms the senses, brain and central nervous system, so that the child becomes able to raise itself from a lying position to sitting, standing and walking; it develops the child's larynx so, that it can learn to speak; it finely models the brain so that it learns to think. These processes are so deeply spiritual that man may only have them while still being unconscious.

When we are with a child, playing or caring, it can be difficult to perceive these holy forces that are around the child, building him. However, through meditation we have the chance, the favour, the mercy, to be able to build imaginations ourselves. In meditation one is more attentive and concentrated, and such imaginative activity leads to a perception of the real forces in the real child....

In this way we can also learn to see that after the period of learning to walk, speak and think - when the child begins to say 'I' to itself - the etheric body becomes free from the head and enables the development of phantasy and memory, which will of course only bloom when the child is going to learn at school. The heart is still deeply asleep, the limbs even more so.

So there are three steps in becoming free of the etheric body. In the first few years the child doesn't want to be bothered with all kinds of interference by the educators. It has to undertake the greatest work of its whole life....

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This blog is nr. 52, which means that I wrote a text every week for a whole year. Next week it will be the first one of the second year! Thank you for reading them and sending your comments.

 
A child is love that has become visible
This book is currently only available in Dutch and German.What is a child? by Mieke Mosmuller