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News 39: 29 SeptemberAnthroposophy in Hawkes BayNewsletter 39-24 for Sunday 29 September 2024 Calendar of Coming Events-- Diary Dates In the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
******************************************************************************** Invitation to Rising Moon Cafe Sunday, 6th October, 3.00 p.m. At the Rudolf Steiner Centre, Hastings. Rising Moon Cafe follows on from the three sessions on Living on the Pathway towards Death. Its aim is to provide an opportunity for people to meet together and share their own experiences or thoughts relating to end of life and death. Koha towards refreshments and use of the Centre will be appreciated. *************** When arranging the Rising Moon Cafe, we found inspiration and practical ideas from the Death Cafes which began early in the 21st century and have been attended by more than 18,000 people (often strangers) in 89 countries, including NZ. Rising Moon Cafe will incorporate some of their basic guidelines such as one person speaks at the time, a facilitator oversees the gathering, there is respect for different views, no set agenda, and it is not a counselling session. Anything that is repeated after the cafe is not to be linked to a person. There is not to be advertising of products or pushing one’s own views like environmental, political and religious. Its main focus is to give people opportunities to talk about their own experiences and thoughts about end of life and death . The name of Rising Moon Cafe comes from the reflective quality of the moon as it reflects the sun’s light. As death draws near, the importance of reflecting on one’s life can also be beneficial as life and death are part of a whole, as we heard in the Living of the Pathways towards Death series. Rudolf Steiner discussed life after death, and how the first of the planetary spheres that the soul then goes through is that of the Moon, where one’s life on earth is reflected - hence the name of Rising Moon Cafe. You are warmly invited to Rising Moon Cafe at 3.00 to 4.30 p.m. on Sunday, 6th October, to talk about end of life and death, and to bring our Living on the Pathway towards Death sessions to rest for this year. Diana Bacchus and Bernie Raichle *************************************************************************** Cottage , fully furnished, 2 large rooms, warm and comfortable with new kitchenette, set in peaceful gardens available for permanent rent. Ideal for single person. $400 weekly includes power and internet. Contact Sophie Lankovsky: 0274 889328 <lslankovsky123@xtra.co.nz> *************************************************************************** Eurythmy on Tour
'Be what you are – give what you have' 7.30pm, Sunday 20th October In NZ the opportunity to watch professional stage eurythmy rarely occurs. We are excited to announce that in October Cornelia Klose is touring the country with her solo-programme 'Be what you are – give what you have'. Cornelia has dedicated her eurythmy-life to the arts and has performed and taught eurythmy-students world-wide, including China and is currently still working in Vietnam. She has lived in the Philippines where she was daily confronted with Human Rights violations. Returning to Europe she became increasingly aware of the desecration in her own culture. These experiences inspired her to this programme, ‘Homage to the Human Rights’. ‘Be what you are- Give what you have' is a poetical and musical journey through some of the essential articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Cornelia will be accompanied by Elien Hoffmans Speech, Ingrid Palmer piano, Miru Shimaoka (ex Taikura student) violin. The performance will be held at Taikura Rudolf Steiner School Door Tickets: Adults $20, Students $15 ****************************************** Experience and PunishmentWith moral questions it is often helpful to approach them entirely from outside, as it were from a completely amoral standpoint. So, with the problems of punishment one can very well start from domains and experiences of life to which one otherwise never applies this word. One can for instance think of the following situations. There is an engineer who has constructed a new machine. It has been thought out, drawn, calculated and at last constructed with the greatest care for every detail. Then the moment comes for running it. Such cases show again and again that in spite of all experience and the most prudent considerations unexpected errors appear, disturbing factors that escaped the mind of the planner. The machine has teething troubles, as the engineer says, that have to be gradually overcome in practice. Or, to take another example, a shopkeeper has stocked his shop ready for some specific need. It is apparent, however, when the goods are actually used, that the estimate was not nearly comprehensive and exact enough. Actually, the need that occurs is greater or smaller, refers to different qualities and such like. The greater the business experience that is won from successes and failures, the more exact and dependable the advance considerations can be. The examples could be multiplied indefinitely. Like the skier, who learns through failing to judge the gradient of the slope correctly, there also belongs to this category the strategist who is prepared, at any moment, as fresh reports come in, to alter the picture he has of the position and the strength of the enemy, and to give suitable accordingly; the weather forecaster as well as the personnel manager, who aims at judging the capacities and character of a new employee in advance. All such cases have this in common that only when success or failure have occurred is it possible to see to what extent the original idea corresponded with actual reality and in what direction it was in need of correction. Ultimately it is always a matter of consciousness, whether one succeeds in picturing the whole range of single factors so concretely, exactly and comprehensively in advance that the steps taken lead to results that actually live up to expectations. Moreover it is just the total or partial failures that are particularly instructive. They are the inducement to make the conceptions ever more exact, to the point and correct, to increase ever more the consciousness that looks ahead. After all, such broadening of consciousness is the basis of all learning that does not exhaust itself in the accumulation of knowledge but seeks to flow into action that takes hold of life creatively. Similarly, all that one calls experience in the widest sense, whether in business or in life is based on this. Every time, the correction comes about as the result of insight that grows more and more, in a perpetual pendulum swing between observing and taking mental stock of the achievement and utilizing this knowledge for future planning. And, as has already been said, the failures are experienced as especially educative. For knowledge and experience are aimed for at all costs. One is prepared to take trouble and risks in the hope that the result will reveal just those factors that have hitherto escaped consciousness. Certainly in all these situations nobody would speak of punishment in the moral sense. One might be reminded, in fun, that a man deserves the punishment of having to have in his legs what he does not have in his head, or that he has to pay for his experience. But the experience is usually willingly paid for, because experience, knowledge of the facts, practical skill, and a consciousness that is both comprehensive and forward-looking is the ideal of everyone who wishes to feel confident in face of the tasks that confront him. Now as soon as action passes over into the moral sphere, the position immediately changes quite decisively. As to mistakes that a man makes out of moral weakness and faults of character the deepening of understanding will by no means be sought with the same energy and purposiveness as in the case of insufficient insight. On the contrary, desires, illusions and pretences interfere here in unpredictable abundance and strength. It might possibly wound ones self-love and vanity to have to confess that one did not possess the necessary intelligence, experience and statistics to avoid failure. But how easy that is compared with the necessity of confessing that the failure arose out of laziness, a craving for pleasure or untruthfulness, that one was being egoistic, avaricious, spiteful, jealous or ambitious. For the very admission of this entails the obligation to change it. And there is the rub. To change inadequate ideas and statistics is a task that cuts far less deep into ones flesh than the task of working on ones own moral being, character and will. For this, incomparably greater efforts are required and because one wants to avoid these one avoids the knowledge and admission that they are necessary. Or to be more exact, even when this knowledge seeps through, and one guesses at the truth about ones own weakness, out of this very situation forces appear in the soul that again prevent the truth from dawning, that discolour the facts, show them in a false light, embellish them, or hide them. The subconscious, that is ever so sly, begins to defend itself; the instincts, all that is of an unclear, feeling nature in the soul takes up the fight and keeps on suppressing the absolute clarity of consciousness. This happens in a thousand different ways: man's subconscious is inexhaustible in inventing deceptive masks. It occurs time and again that someone — oneself, often enough — speaks offensive, hurtful, vile words to another person, and then prides himself on his frankness to speak the blunt truth. A kind of sly egoism is hidden behind the assertion that is usually made in good faith, that one is doing it all for the sake of the other chap. E.g. in the case of that type of mother love we call foolish fondness that, when it comes to it, only wants to enjoy itself in the child. Altogether it is self-indulgence that plays a great role here. It is much pleasanter to imagine oneself to be a pure idealist than to work hard at a factual knowledge of the ungratifying reality of ones own being. The subconscious resists true self-knowledge time and again, casts veils over ones own weakness, embellishes the unpleasant deeds that have occurred. And experiences will have to take place that can put up a greater resistance to being misconstrued and concealed, that, as it were, force a deeper, more penetrating knowledge, a real expansion and awakening of consciousness. These can be experiences of the following kind: someone, who at times gets into violent tempers and who up till then has considered this to be an expression of manly strength to be proud of, finds himself in the situation of having to witness a similar outburst in someone else. And the repulsive sight brings home to him, all of a sudden, that actually behind this apparent strength is nothing more than a fearful weakness in self-control, that animal-like instincts get the upper hand over the forces of human consciousness. Or, to take a more harmless example: Somebody, who, through lack of inner discipline has acquired untidy eating habits, is startled at having to see a similar nasty sight in a fellow eater. On both occasions it is the confrontation that is effective, seeing oneself if a mirror, as it were. For such a mirror picture certainly stands there with far greater force than pictures produced from within, where desires and instincts can work to hide the truth. No, these mirror pictures meet one from outside, one has no influence on them, and one can in no way change them at will. Certainly one can try, as it were, to look the other way, try not wanting to see it, not wanting to believe it. But somehow it finds its mark. As an objective picture, free from the influence of ones own arbitrary whims, it penetrates even deeper into the consciousness and also the so-called sub-consciousness than mere thoughts, and all the more forcefully the more exactly the picture really is a true likeness of ones own behaviour. Such an experience often arises, too, through a word thrown at one, which one grudgingly has to acknowledge as appropriate. St. Augustine, in his "Confessions" (IX, 8) tells the story of his mother Minica, who acquired the habit as a young girl of having a sip of the wine that she was sent to the cellar to fetch. And this habit took ever firmer hold of her, till one day a slave, in anger, shouted the word "Meribibula" (wine-bibber) at her. "That cut her to the quick, and in a flash she saw the ugliness of her action, condemned it and threw it from her." A different kind of experience by means of which a truer, more sincere self-knowledge is, as it were, forced to come about, arises when the results of ones deeds are looked at afterwards, when one can no longer change them, when they have withdrawn from the realm of desire and passion and become objective. Previously one has not been able or willing to see; now one must see. Previously one saw ones own wishful thinking, now one sees the reality that looks so different. Schiller expressed this experience impressively at the end of his "Bride of Messina" — A deed has quite a different face after it has been done than before it has been done. This is the case with individuals and also with nations and states. Before the Battle of Jena in 1806 nearly all the men, who were later on to bring about the moral, political and military renovations, were present in Prussia. But one heard nothing from them, because they did not see and did not wish to see the decline that had taken place. Their consciousness was dimmed. Queen Louise brought it to expression in the words: "We had fallen asleep upon the Laurels of Frederick the Great." But even she could not say this until the collapse had actually occurred. The awakening began with the fall of Jena. One saw what things had really been like; the veils of pride and illusions had been swept away most cruelly. It was impossible to close ones eyes any more. And now it was possible for Fichte and Schleiermacher, Stein and Scharnhorst to begin with reform. Examples of how one can delude oneself out of the best of intentions are to be seen, nowadays, in the frequent cases of people who out of a sense of duty, or in the opinion of being indispensable, or out of joy in the work refuse to see that their strength is exhausted and already overtaxed. Thus it can happen to a surgeon, that just because he is under maximum strain, an operation which he has performed often enough suddenly miscarries. The disaster that he has caused now lies before him in all its tormenting irrevocability and forces the knowledge upon him that he could have avoided it, if he had heeded in good time the symptoms of overwork with which as a doctor he should have been familiar enough. In such cases, in which the screen that deceived the consciousness is forcibly torn away, be it that one beholds a mirror image of ones own behaviour, or be it that the consequences of ones own behaviour, or be it that the consequences of a deed press themselves upon the self-consciousness in unavoidable reality, here it is fitting to apply the word "retribution". In the first place it comes readiest to the lips of uninvolved spectators, whether in jest or in bitter earnest. As in the case of a young fellow on a boat-trip who shows off and then falls into the water and becomes a ridiculous sight, one says that he gets his "just punishment", the same can be said of the usurer who suddenly becomes desperately poor, of the deceiver who is deceived, of the liar whom nobody believes any more. And one will understand by the words "just" punishment those cases in particular in which the deed and consequence correspond to one another with inner logic, where, as it were, the consequence is the exact mirrored answer of the previous action. But even in the case of the person who has made mistakes or committed misdeeds himself, in the face of the consequences, especially when they turn back upon himself, the words are forced to his lips: "It is absolutely fair that this should happen to me; this is the punishment that I deserve." From "PUNISHMENT AND SELF-EDUCATION" by Erich Gabert (an early Waldorf teacher)
Posted: Sun 29 Sep 2024 |
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