The Earth’s elliptical orbit has two focal points: the Sun as a physical center, and the other as a spiritual center. Two focal points, one earthly and one cosmic, also sustain a community. The common will arises when everyone in the community wills it together.
The title of the Agriculture Conference was “You Never Farm Alone.” But often, out of courage or perhaps overconfidence, people still say, “I can do it alone.” Then another voice warns, “No, a biodynamic farm is too large and too complex a project. You can’t do that alone; you have to do it together with others.” Humility begins to sprout and grow. Voluntary collaboration oscillates between courage and humility. Both are needed. When speaking specifically about the initiative group—the people who really take the project in hand and lead it forward—how does collaboration work there? My experiences come from working with the L’Aubier initiative as a farmer for 30 years, and from 16 years of working at the Goetheanum.
Heart of the Community
The inner core of every initiative is its field of actual collaboration. When those carrying out the activity cooperate out of their own free will, the surrounding community resonates in that same spirit. Such an initiative or working group can be four to seven people, but it can also be a married couple or as many as seventeen people, as is currently the case with the Goetheanum leadership. Where is such a community put to the test, to see whether free will succeeds or not? In the group meetings. These gatherings are the real heart of a community.
Everything from the periphery comes together here and gains new momentum, so that it can then pulsate through the coming week or month. These sessions, which are often repetitive, orchestrate the free will of all. A free person is someone who is capable of thinking independently. “I think, therefore I am,” said René Descartes. We could also say: I plow, therefore I am. I cook, therefore I am. In short: I am because I am. The ‘I’, a being grounded in itself, does not need the world to lend it something for its own foundation; it stands upon itself.
In his Table Talk, Martin Luther says that he fears his own heart more than he fears the Pope and all the cardinals. This means: I carry the Pope within me. This personality stands at its peak. Sociologically speaking, with the advent of modernity, this marks the emergence of the self-founded personality in the social context. This is something new. This individualization is the driving force behind social development. Is there anything that could slow us down from driving this individualization ever further? I believe that anything that seeks to oppose this trend will, sooner or later, be pushed aside. There is something very deep that expresses itself in this individualization. It is part of our very nature that we possess this autonomy on a normal experiential level and are also proud of it.
To Be the Sun on the Earth
But this pride is accompanied by a subtle feeling—a hint of loneliness, of isolation. The thought arises: I am, after all, entirely on my own! And so we swing back and forth between the proud and the lonely, abandoned self, which asks: Do I still have any connection to anything or anyone? This underlying question springs from what Rudolf Steiner calls the “consciousness soul” within the personality. By this, he means the youngest, third stage of the evolution of the soul, which began during the Renaissance. The first stage, the sentient soul, refers to a soul landscape that still resonated directly with nature and the course of the sun, and was carried by a natural sense of belonging within nature. With the second stage, the intellectual soul [Gemütseele], it is no longer immediate sensation but the intellect (as the name suggests) that confronts the world and grasps its laws. Calculating the course of the sun and planets, conceiving a model of the planetary orbits: these are expressions of an intellectual relationship to the world. We can understand that the sun, in its course through the zodiac, within the context of the entire starry sky, is an “ambassador” of the whole firmament.
Now the third step: What happened outwardly with the Copernican revolution—placing the sun at the center—corresponds inwardly to the step toward the conscious soul. The sun now rests fixed in the center, just as the human ‘I’ is grounded in itself. Because I can ground myself within this new constitution, I can conceive of the sun as cosmologically fixed. I am sun-like, on the moving Earth. I have a part within me that is sun-like, and at the same time, I am a part of earthly existence: this is the soul constitution that Rudolf Steiner called “the consciousness soul.” We are not a social being by nature, but rather an individual being and perhaps even a being of solitude.
Michael as Spirit of the Times
This individualization is the driving force. It brings freedom but at a price: our sense of belonging to the community of stars has been shattered, our kinship with the beings of Earth has become objectified, and we’ve lost the brotherly and sisterly connection to our fellow human beings. Amidst all this loss, what remains is free will. Through this, we can make a new resolve to work together with others.
There are various stages in the development of consciousness soul culture, as first formulated by the Renaissance church scholar Johannes Trithemius. According to Christian tradition, the seven archangels take turns reigning as spirit of the time for approximately 350 years each. Rudolf Steiner took up this idea and noted how the transition from Gabriel to Michael occurred during the last third of the 19th century. Steiner was not merely a personal witness to this turning of the ages; in a sense, he was schooled by the new spirit of the age, by Michael. Just as Gabriel represents the moon in Christian tradition, Michael is the archangel of the sun and is associated with a striving for freedom. To reposition the free human being within society and to place him in relation to the Earth and the spiritual world is part of the essence of this archangel. This, Rudolf Steiner called anthroposophy, a spiritual science, a science of the ‘I’. Anthroposophy takes this concept of the ‘I’ seriously and understands the ‘I’ as the culmination of a long psychological and sociological development, much like a seed. The ‘I’, as a seed and result of an old cultural cycle, now becomes the starting point for a new development and evolution.
Farming as ‘I’-Activity
The science of the ‘I’ as a spiritual seed—that is anthroposophy in all its fullness. In June 1924, this culminated in the Agriculture Course in Koberwitz. It is a course rooted in this science of the ‘I’. For example, Steiner says that we humans, as ‘I’-beings, are the foundation of agriculture. Quite the opposite of the chemist Justus Liebig (1803–73), who laid the scientific foundation for the industrialization of agriculture with his nutrient-substitution theory. Steiner takes the highest concept from the cultural-scientific view of the human being and turns it into an agronomic concept. This is not merely poetic—it conveys that the agricultural individuality can be a self-grounded being, one that acts productively out of itself. The biodynamic farm is capable of generating a sufficient harvest—and thus an income—every year, while at the same time ensuring that soil fertility, as the foundation for future harvests, is not depleted but is actually built up within the production process.
Breakthrough Becomes Inversion
In the fourth and fifth lectures, Steiner describes the biodynamic preparations—briefly, concisely, and practically. This breakthrough becomes an inversion. Nature is the foundation of co-creative work. Emancipation becomes participation, especially through the compost preparations. From within the closed agricultural organism, the biodynamic preparations invite this individuality to open toward the cosmos. Rudolf Steiner’s verse “Human beings speak to the stars” becomes reality. I believe Michael stood behind him in the Agriculture Course, transforming this breakthrough into an inversion, to describe a sustainable form of agriculture that is future-oriented—that even arises from out of the future itself. It seems evident that such an inverted agriculture requires corresponding social forms that are not merely based on traditional social structures but also emerge from the future. How does community arise from free will? In particular, how does collaboration work? We do not want to give up personal freedom, and so we have to make our way from an emancipatory to a participatory social approach.
Since today, the ‘I’ rests within itself, we can now develop a cosmology in which the sun is also at rest. Using Tycho Brahe’s observational data, Johannes Kepler realized that the sun is not the center of planetary orbits after all. There are two centers, or rather, two foci around which the planets orbit in an ellipse. The sun stands at one of them. Isn’t this cosmological image the basic design, the archetype for cooperation based on free will? I have my own will, and I am in one of the centers. And who stands in the other center—who helps me to be the person I want to be? Who is my guide in this development?
Three Steps to Common Will
Let’s go back to group meetings and get-togethers. There are two types of gatherings. First, there are work meetings. We come together from all branches of the organization to discuss how everything fits into the bigger picture. Two prerequisites are that I have autonomy and that I lay all my cards on the table during the meeting. Transparency matters here, especially regarding financial figures, but also regarding my intentions. Then comes the actual willing of the common good. Those are the three steps: From our autonomous positions in regard to individual tasks, we come together as a group; we are transparent about our situation; and we coordinate future activities because we want to will a common good.
This kind of meeting requires a counterpart—a complementary gathering where we do research together or work through a text together. Here, the quality of listening counts. Not what the other person says, but what they mean—an empathetic listening. It is an art of listening that invites us to speak differently. It leads to what Steiner calls the awakening to the soul-spiritual in the other. So here, the first step is the mutual agreement; the second is the listening; and the third is the awakening to the other—not to oneself—to the other!
The earthly gathering, the earthly heart, needs a cosmic, exploratory gathering that opens things up. Of course, these can be combined, artistically interwoven, but they still stand as a polarity. When a community comes under stress, there are many “earthly” meetings, and the cosmic ones tend to fall by the wayside. In my experience, this doesn’t work. The two gatherings are like the horn manure and the horn silica—Earth and cosmos. We need both.
Add to this, the accompanying community. And here, too, are three qualities. Surrounding the initiative group are many who accompany it with trust. Then, there are those who finance it—the periphery supports the initiative. As a third element, I suggest openness. The periphery actually represents the whole world and breathes between being within and without. The periphery says: we also bring you questions and impulses that you may not be able to see so well at your place in the center. It’s a double heart formed by free people, and it has a beating pulse.
Two years ago, I visited a farm. It was a time when the overall situation for Demeter in Central Europe was very difficult. Sales of organic and Demeter products had plummeted. “How are things in general and financially?” I asked the farmer. He replied, “Good.” I was astonished and asked for clarification. “We have this big store; it supports everything.” So, I went to the store and asked the owner: “My friend, how are things? Do you have enough customers?” “It’s going great,” he replied. “Why?” “People come to our store because we’re a farm store.” So the farmer says: I’m doing well because I have the store; and from the store, we hear: I’m doing well because I have the farm.
Another example. One of my colleagues from the Goetheanum leadership said that the esoteric, the spiritual, is distant, is in heaven. I replied: “But you can’t say that. The spiritual is precisely there when you do something practical on the Earth, such as plowing or driving a tractor. That’s esotericism.” He objected, saying I couldn’t say driving a tractor was esotericism. But I wouldn’t let up—and neither would he. My question was: Where is this esoteric-spiritual core? Finally, another colleague stepped in and said: “If, for you, esotericism—this point of the spirit—goes all the way up and keeps going higher and higher until it disappears into infinity, then it re-enters the earthly realm from below. It’s the same point.” And that was the solution.
Rising Up When Hitting a Snag
Human dignity as a whole rests on the recognition of free will. This is sacred. Gatherings must be structured in a way that respects this. Awakening to the spiritual and emotional nature of another person is a painful process. Over the years, I have made the following a bit of a rule for myself: If you can’t resolve something at the level where you encounter the other person, then you have to pull yourself up higher. Pulling yourself up means trying to find the next higher level, initially through an inner dialogue regarding the encounter. If you hit a snag at the earthly focal point, then it’s worth turning to the cosmic. There, something may shine through what’s rooted in this life on Earth. Something can stream through there, a karmic intuition. There, where the free will of the other as well as my own is grounded, there, in the ‘I’, is something that is not confined between birth and death. Rather, it uses the gates of birth and death to breathe between earthly life and spiritual life over a succession of several earthly lives.
We pull ourselves up by our own hair. It is a mutual awakening. There are moments when this can be experienced briefly by the entire group, the entire community, when something resonates from a new kind of communal being that carries the future within itself. Such possibilities can be created through collaboration based on free will.
This is a lightly edited version of the talk given at the 2026 Agriculture Conference at the Goetheanum. The full talk is available for viewing on GoetheanumTV.
More Agriculture Conference at the Goetheanum: You Never Farm Alone
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Title image Scenes from the 2026 Annual Agriculture Conference at the Goetheanum, Photo: Xue Li
