Honolulu, Hawaii. 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death. How does he live on in specific individuals? Van James, artist, art lecturer, and member of the Section for the Fine Arts in North America, gives his answers.
Which sentence of Rudolf Steiner has particularly touched you and why?
Rudolf Steiner says, “Art must become the lifeblood of the soul.” This struck me because it clarifies the need for artistic feeling as a capacity for our future development. He puts one of the aspects of Spirit Self into a unique light. The artistic element, too often relegated to entertainment, recreation, and indulgent self-expression, is in fact experiential empathy. It is a key to spiritual experience and research. It is an activity, a verb not a noun. How do we make this artistic element the pulse beat of our thinking, feeling, and will?
Where did anthroposophy irritate you?
What appears at first as irritation with anthroposophy is actually irritation with myself for not being able to think, imagine, or intuit the bigger picture into which the irritating idea might make total sense. For instance, with regard to statements about race, moon beings, sub-nature forces, and doppelgängers, it can be a struggle to wrap one’s head around expressions of a century ago that may be addressing spiritual perspectives and seem so wrong to a 21st-century way of thinking. But should the irritation be placed on the doorstep of anthroposophy or on me for not comprehending the full context?
For which life questions is anthroposophy particularly important to you?
Anthroposophy is particularly important for all of life’s questions! For me, physical and soul-spiritual health are greatly impacted by an anthroposophical understanding. But the question of health extends to a rich interaction with others and the world. Social relationships, and political, financial, environmental, educational and artistic questions are all aided by spiritual science. These are life questions where anthroposophy is important to me.
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Photo Van James, Private
