- Arie van Ameringen
Dear Friends,
Although the summer
season is the time of the year when the human soul can take advantage of nature
and sunlight to regain the strength necessary to withstand the winter months,
many of us were deeply affected by the tragedy which occurred in Lac Megantic
in Quebec and by the devastating upheavals in the Middle East.
In this second case, we
look bewilderingly and with great sadness at the motivations of the opposing
sides in this conflict and the suffering of so many innocent people. Any true
understanding of this situation is made all the more difficult by the fact that
the opposing forces are staunchly polarized. The question of who is on the side
of good and who is on the side of evil cannot be determined with any degree of
certainty.
Meditation World Wide
My wife and I were invited to participate in the
gathering of the international movement Meditation
World Wide. This initiative has been active for seven years now, having
been born out of a need to provide a forum for the research being done into
meditation according to anthroposophy in various countries throughout the
world.
During three days, from July 4th to July 6th,
participants from North America and Europe had the opportunity to share their
research and their questions and explore the possibilities for the future of
this initiative. It is to be hoped that this process will bear fruit so that
meditation work can become increasingly more known and experienced throughout
the world.
Ekaterinburg
At the end of July a conference organized by Olga
Kornienko and entitled: The Urals: the
Border, the Crossroads and the meeting, was held in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The Ural mountain range, which
stretches from north to south, marks the separation between Europe and Asia. Ekaterinburg
is an important industrial center and has had its share of historical
upheavals. Indeed, it is in this city that the 1918 assassination of the Tsar
and his family occurred. Noted for its rich mineral deposits, the town has long
been a center for the armaments industry. This region finds itself torn between
the impulses of the consciousness soul and those of the shamanistic traditions still
practiced in Siberia.
The conference gave the participants the opportunity
to delve into questions linked to the geographical, cultural and spiritual
aspects of this region. But as we went deeper into the implications of this
theme it became less specific to the geographical location and more universal
in nature. The conversation broadened to include questions of the nature of human
life, both physical and spiritual, and the threshold experiences we all
encounter as human beings living in our period in time. The Saint Petersburg
eurythmy troupe highlighted the traditional stories and legends of the region
as well as several deeply spiritual aspects of the Russian language.
Building a spiritual community
During the Ekaterinburg conference I gave a
presentation entitled Building a
Spiritual Community: Where Time and Space meet. Here are some of the points
I touched on in my talk. (This research is ongoing and I shall develop it
further on another occasion.)
During this conference the various aspects of the
human being were explored in in the context of the question: how is who I am
affected by the place I live and the time in which I live? Indeed, for each
epoch human tasks are different. In this time of the consciousness soul the
human “I” has taken on new strength and the forms long established by tradition
must be transformed by the activity of the “I”. Modern science has forgotten the
human being’s spiritual origin, and anthroposophy seeks to lead us to
understand just this, that the human being is a spiritual entity. It is the “I”
that creates its own karma through its suffering. (See Rudolf Steiner:
The Whitsun Festival. Its Place in the Study of Karma, Lecture of June 4, 1924,
Dornach, GA 236.)
The relationship between the various elements of the
human being and the “I” are what allows us to understand the essence of karma.
The physical body is related to the earth, the etheric body to the cosmic ether
and the astral body to the astrality in the cosmos. By becoming aware of the
manner in which the “I” manifests itself in the cosmos we understand that the
“I” is always a repetition of past lives on earth. The “I” moulds its karma in
the realm of the hierarchies in the life between death and a new birth. To be
able to follow the “I” through its successive lives and deaths we cannot remain
in space (the earthly domain). No two successive earth existences can occupy
the same space. We move from the realm of space into the stream of time (the
eternal). On earth, time is always calculated by spatial movement and as such
is devoid of any spirit reality.
Each time a human being is born he emerges from out of
the stream of time (out of the eternal) and enters into space (physical). The Christ
being unites time and space. He brings the time element to the human being. And
when a human being unites himself with the Christ, he once again receives the
stream of time into his being. Understanding our karma also allows us to
understand the other person and discover how our karmas are linked. Only when space
and time can flow together will we be able to truly form spiritual communities.
Upcoming Events
The Council will hold its next meeting in Ottawa from
the 12th to the 14th of October and will also meet with
local members on that occasion. The matter of the Statement of Purpose of the
Anthroposophical Society in Canada will be taken up (see Dorothy LeBaron’s
article in this issue).
On October 18th and 19th
Constanza Kaliks, head of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, will be in
Montréal. She has agreed to give a lecture on the evening of October 18th
entitled Consciousness in Time of Change
and will also lead a conversation on the same theme the following morning.
At the beginning of
November (the exact date and theme T.B.A.), Johannes Kühl, head of the Science
Section at the Goetheanum, will hold a lecture in Toronto.
I want also to inform you that the
Council is actively pursuing the recruitment of a new member for Council from
Western Canada, to be confirmed in 2014.
Arie van Ameringen
General Secretary
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