Among clouds, light, mountain ridges, and a meditative engagement with Rudolf Steiner’s mantric texts, a space of concentration was created for 65 people. Within this space, personal struggles, moments of listening to one another, and artistic gestures coalesced into a shared experience. What happened here was practice at the threshold. The mantra retreat was initiated and organized by members of the Public Secrets ensemble, an initiative that aims to combine meditative culture and public life.1
When working with spiritual texts, we’re high up among the clouds. In this particular case, in one of the highest mountain villages in Europe at an altitude of 1,900 meters [1.2 mi.]: in Chandolin, Switzerland. Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany, is likely to have come here quite often, as attested by all the photos and letters in the hotel hallway. The Grand Hotel has aged since then. Now one can only stay here by booking the entire hotel. We are a group of 65 who want to stay here together for a week in September—at eye level with the mountain ranges, in the steady gaze of the Matterhorn looking down on us like a sphinx. This is a reunion of friends and a meeting of new people. It’s also a meeting of people who already have difficulties with each other and will continue to have them during this week—just like in everyday life. The difference here is that we have gathered because we want to work with the mantras from the 19 Class Lessons. We all have different approaches when it comes to working with mantras, in terms of age, lifestyle, and anthroposophical background. The intention to seek something new together, with the necessary humility and lightness, is like a protective shield against our ordinary consciousnesses, everyday states of mind, and simple judgments. We will live here together for a week with the mantras, removed from our day-to-day lives. Those who are here have made time for this, some with financial support if they could not afford the cost. Sponsors chose not to be named. We gave our thanks to the mountains on their behalf.
We arrive to an overcast sky. Any apprehension we still had about our undertaking—what is actually going to happen here?—disappears the moment we read all 19 mantras together for the first time on our first morning. Over the course of the coming week, 65 people will listen to this entire collection together for about an hour each day. Most of them have not yet heard the mantras as a whole but have only worked with them individually. On the first afternoon, we’re all brought together by another joint activity, an initiative planned in advance by a member of our party, and everyone is encouraged to participate. Each person was asked to bring some water from where they live or wherever they’ve just arrived from. On the first afternoon, after a few sentences about our origins, we gradually fill a large silver bowl with the contents of our bottles, glasses, and vials. At the end of the week, this water will find its way back to the clouds. We’ll let it evaporate over a fire in a group ceremony. The arc will have come full circle.
On our second day, the sky clears. The sun is unexpectedly strong, even though the forecast predicted rain. The search for sunscreen begins as the first hike of the afternoon approaches. On the hike, my body will understand what sustains it. Gradually, everyone begins to get some color in their cheeks. The mountains glow, covered in glaciers. Time lengthens. Slowly, as the days pass, we come closer to our humanity. We come closer to the beasts—the beings we must first overcome if we want to reach the reality across the abyss. One of the participants has been drawing these beasts for eight years with his eyes closed and with his left hand. We’ve been invited into a meadow to develop our self-awareness, so we try drawing, too, and share our perceptions of the beasts, our questions, and our needs. I think this could be part of anthroposophical psychotherapy. We also laugh, jump over thresholds at night on the way to the observatory, and ask ourselves what conscious innocence is. Some meditate on a mantra line by line in the morning. Others examine what happens when you read mantras 1, 2, and 3 in Swiss German. There are pictorial contemplations of light and shadow. Someone shares their work on the planetary seals. Some do yoga before breakfast. Again and again, small groups can be found on the hiking trails between the village shop and the somewhat remote hotel. Engrossed in conversation, they smile at each other as they pass. Their faces are soft, as are their hearts, despite the friction. A clear contraction emerges, not constricting but sharpening. Things become dramatic when someone asks if we’re allowing ourselves a luxury here.
Gradually, I begin to wonder how I will ever get down from this mountain, whether my brakes will hold for the 24 kilometers of serpentine road, and how I will land in the world below. Thresholds encompass at least two sides, and I understand mantras as thresholds. They bring something into contact with something else and bring something into being. Something so fleeting and yet so profound that it repeatedly slips away from consciousness. But its effect is perceptible. It unfolds in our work with them. And its effect unfolds us. Within us, the verticality of being in the spirit and the horizontality of life in the heart connect. Together they form and open my earthly space, my humanity, and my heaven—and at the same time, the perceptive skin for all three. I am grateful. Gilda Bartel, Germany.
The Edge
When we meet, we perceive whether there is something between us. This something can have an edge but also fragility and fluidity, as it can disappear completely. Anonymous curiosity of retreat in the mountains: for me, it was an unknown place to which I brought no expectations, and our meeting carried many surprises.
The edge of in-between can surprise. While I am alone, the others are sharply separated. Overcoming the loneliness means paying attention to the edge, not letting it dissolve or grow, to integrate it. It takes time, and it does not just depend on me. It needs my activity and interest for the new between us.
There were groups in Chandolin, overlapping groups of different sizes that knew each other, where the edge was often softened or integrated or not present. Different languages, curiosity and openness, common past or future, or both. For me, the biggest surprise was finding out that I did not know that some of these others existed—this discovery brings me warmth and hope for a common future, even if irregular.
The language, too, has shown me an edge. In the third tablet, the middle verse—I thought this was just me getting somewhere that is not a space, unable to continue reading. But in Chandolin, I saw I am not alone. There are more of us, a group; when we get there, we need time. It does not allow you to immediately continue reading, especially not in your mother tongue. To want to feel the very being of my soul, and at the same time to read on—that I cannot. I want to integrate this source of the new, then I could be born again and, perhaps, move on. Peter Neurath, Slovakia. [original in English]
The Free Space
At the beginning of the week, outside the Grand Hotel, kissed by fresh mountain air and enveloped by the fading late-summer evening sun, I watch at the end of the day as the sensory world reveals itself in this impressive part of our Earth, “color upon color, form upon form.” In joyful anticipation, I lift my head, searching for stars in the approaching night sky.
I become conscious that some thousand kilometers away—but close to the screen in my hand every day for the past two years—someone else fears what might fall out of that same night sky. I become conscious that, surrounded by ancient mountain ranges, with 65 friendly faces under the same roof and three lovingly prepared meals a day, the sensory world around me reveals freedom and peace. I become conscious that, surrounded by mountains of bombed-out concrete, hollowed-out cities, and unattainable food, another person’s sensory world reveals displacement and war.
It’s a knowledge, a consciousness, without understanding, without comprehension. How can the human right to exist shine beyond the threshold in divine equality, while on this side it has been darkened for centuries by the shadow of unjust differences? How do esoteric freedom and responsibility relate to each other in light of the dramatically unequal conditions of the sensory world?
At the end of the week, inside the Grand Hotel, a group gathers in a closed circle—nearly closed. An empty seat in our middle gives rise to what for me is the most important question of our joint work with the mantras: “Who is sitting in the empty seat?” An empty seat, kept free for the presence of the absent other. Keeping an empty seat free—in a physical as well as a meditative space—has, over time, become for me the smallest form of responsibility I can assume on Earth, this side of the threshold. Janne Bierens co-led the YIP [The International Youth Initiative Program] in Järna and currently works for the Iona Foundation in Amsterdam.
Secret Science Remains Secret—Until It Comes to Life in the Soul
Since people now experience thoughts in their physical bodies and no longer in their higher bodies, it’s no longer enough to simply read or hear the thoughts of secret science [or “occult” science]. In the past, this was sufficient, as people were able to grasp the original thoughts simply through thinking. They were able to experience occult science within themselves simply by being told about it. At that time, occult science wasn’t published. It was only passed on to students in training. In the essay “Previous Secrecy and the Current Publication of Occult Science” [Frühere Geheimhaltung und jetzige Veröffentlichung der Geheimwissenschaft] in GA 35, and in various other lectures, Rudolf Steiner mentioned that there were people in secret orders who began to misuse occult science for egoistic purposes, such as to gain power. Rudolf Steiner’s publication of occult science was therefore intended to protect people from this abuse. However, this does not mean that simply learning about occult science is enough. It is called secret science. And it remains secret to us as long as we do not discover it within ourselves.
For me, Rudolf Steiner’s communications are like a key to occult science. Just as a person can use a key to open a door, so too can Rudolf Steiner’s communications, whether in writings, lectures, or mantras, be brought to life in our thinking. Yes, we must actually take them in with the right soul mood and make them resonate within us. When our soul life is filled with these contents, so that it resonates with them, they then unfold within us a life of their own, like a seed planted in fertile ground. This filling of the soul life comes about through the most accurate conceptions possible, which we must generate ourselves within our consciousness on the basis of the texts. They must be created within us in the same way that God created the world. The communications from the book die within us and must be resurrected. They can only do this through creative strength. In his book Christianity as Mystical Fact, Rudolf Steiner wrote, “God is enchanted in the world. And human beings need their own strength to find him. You must awaken this force within yourself. . . . He lives within human beings. And human beings can experience the life of God within themselves. If they are to allow him to come into their consciousness, they must creatively redeem this knowledge.” I would also put forward that the spiritual states of a mantra are enchanted in the mantra and can only be resurrected through creative, inward active force. For me, this applies to all of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual communications.
The spiritual world does not reveal itself to human beings through passive observation, but only when they unite with it inwardly and actively express its effects in their soul, emancipated from the body. Only when human beings actively reproduce the spiritual in their soul and express it through lively inner movement does the spiritual world begin to speak. Based on Rudolf Steiner’s communications, especially his mantric work, the soul can actively immerse itself in the communications through an inner generation of content in the life of imagination and feeling, thereby actively unfolding an inner, suprasensible play of expressions. This re-enlivening arises through the detachment of thinking from the physical brain. Conceptions that are generated with the right inner soul mood unfold a life of their own in the soul; they unfold an inner vibration that resonates with the spiritual world—similar to two tuning forks tuned to the same pitch. Meditation is like singing: only when the inner “tones” are struck correctly does the spiritual world begin to resonate and reveal itself. Fedaa Aldebal, member of the Akanthos Academy Stuttgart and director of the AGiD Central Library in Stuttgart.
The Sculpture of the In-Between
The journey up the mountain road was an immersion. The peaks stretched like columns, holding up a sky swaddled in clouds shimmering with cold, golden light. The air itself was different—thin and crisp, a clarity that whispered for attention. I was reminded of this on a hike when the guide advised, “Slow down.” So I did. I slowed my pace and regulated my breath, and the gift for this surrender was a profound presence.
This practice of presence became my theme. The word “interest,” I recalled, derives from the Latin interesse—“to be between.” My time in Chandolin became a conscious sculpture of the “in-between”: between myself and others, nature, animals, and the cosmos. The form of this sculpture depended entirely on my willingness to listen, not just with my ears, but with all my senses. I asked myself: Am I truly an organ of perception? This is the root of responsibility: the ability to respond to everything around and within me.
This inner work is a journey to look into myself and connect to the cosmic forces. It begins by learning to listen within the flow of feeling, to notice where illusion blends with true being. The challenge is to plunge with courage into this veil of everyday perception, to feel the cosmic currents moving within me, and, in observing, awaken my own soul’s powers.
This “plunging” was my daily immersion. I would sit with the words of the Michael School, experiencing them with my whole being before stepping back into the mundane. This integration is a two-way current: as I listen inwardly, I feel the divine forces streaming from cosmic distances. Their light pours into my being, and the challenge is to meet it. To rest within it. Loving. Trusting. Quiet. And to find oneself in the cosmos is to enter a new landscape of feeling, where a spiritual battle is waged between warmth and cold. To love the warmth alone is to see the Self scattered in spirit pleasure; to let coldness harden you is to disintegrate the Self in suffering. Both are a flight from the real meeting. This is a search for a unifying principle.
This search for a unifying principle defines a real meeting. So often, we encounter the coldness of the other and harden in response, suffering in our isolation. The opposite current is to face their warmth and become so soft, so rapturous, that we lose our roots in the present and fall into illusion. To find the balance between these poles, to truly experience the meeting without hardening or dissolving, is to touch the essence of connection itself—such a profound moment. The balance, the middle path I am forever searching for, is love. To reconnect with the Godhead is to navigate this two-way stream with compassion—both self-compassion and cosmic compassion. It is the kind of warmth that does not disperse but unifies.—Úa Sigrún. [original in English]
Reverse Cultus
On each of the seven days, the sounding of all the mantras from the 19 Lessons was heard together. On the first day, alternately by two voices, then by one voice, accompanied by an artistic process: everyone warmed beeswax in their hands and formed together a shared “colorful window.” On another day, a choir of women recited the nineteen mantras. We also heard them once in seven different languages. Each day brought a new artistic experience. Each participant brought some water from their surroundings, which was poured into a shared bowl. This water formed a resonance with the mantras recited daily. In this way, it became a memory that carries what has happened from the present into the future. The water became a witness: it became a “water vessel.” It was a living, creatively imbued form of science, art, and religion. It was as if all those who participated had come together during these seven days in Chandolin to create a reverse cultus. Chantal Werner-Wachter, France, painter and long-time practitioner of Rudolf Steiner’s training sketches for painters.
Growing Together at an Altitude of 2000 Meters
What a privilege to be able to participate in something like this! To be able to listen to all 19 mantras every day for a week in the high mountains of Valais. Each reading had its own unique character. Listening together, immersing ourselves in Michael’s words, in “the one great mantra,” was the heart of our community during those days. This gave rise to many small initiatives. There were opportunities to go hiking in the mountains and let the big questions of self and world resonate, and time for intimate conversations or for moments of solitude, according to individual needs. The three meals a day, with their lovingly prepared food and warm hospitality—taken care of by the participants on a rotating basis—were also an important part of our time together. During the conversations over meals, interesting experiences were exchanged, private topics found their place, and new contacts were made.
What touched me most during these days was being able to share in the deep struggle of others with the mantric words and the search for their own relationship between self and world. Each of these individual approaches was a gift! But there were also moments of pain, and we were able to experience our own limitations. The great human exemplar became tangible among us, but so did the state of our current, imperfect being. I was very impressed by the affirmation and acceptance of this tension by all those present. This allowed me to experience that I am not alone on this path. I have to find my own individual way of walking it, but there is this community, and I want to be part of it. A few people from this community were present in Chandolin this week, representing a much larger community. Anke Steinmetz, Northern Germany.
Wandering Center
“O Man, know thyself!” Perhaps it was this time-honored exhortation that brought us together this week. Of course, the week was preceded by previous encounters and personal contacts, and it will certainly be followed by new prospects, plans, and friendships. The mantras from Rudolf Steiner’s late work formed the wandering center of this week for me. The mantras opened up a creative space that was filled with initiatives from the participants, some spontaneous, some prepared in advance. I particularly appreciated the conversations with individual people on joint hikes through the mountains or looking together at images or the night sky, and during discussions over meals. All our individual concerns in relation to the mantras, but also what moves us in life in general, came to the fore. Just as valuable were the seemingly small, in-between moments—helping out in the kitchen or on a joint trip to the village shop to buy chocolate. Here, too, I heard the call that shaped this week for me: “O Man, know thyself!” Andreas Blaser, Switzerland, researched contemplation and humanity with a scholarship from AGiD.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Photos Philipp Tok, Maike Meyer-Oldenburg, Herbert Dreiseitl, Simone Helmle, Janne Bierens.
Title image Janne Biersen, Philipp Tok. Image composition: Fabian Roschka.
Footnotes
- See Public Secrets.
