At Pentecost, a conference on the School of Spiritual Science was held at the Goetheanum for the first time. The focus was on the research and cultural work of the Sections. The aim of the organizers was to highlight the full range and diversity of the twelve fields of anthroposophy. A review of the event by Andreas Laudert.
In view of the past one hundred years, now looking toward the future, the question arises, “Are we prepared? What do we learn in our respective fields that enables us to understand and deepen our understanding of anthroposophy?” In his opening lecture on Friday, Peter Selg spanned the gap between yesterday and today. He chose Steiner’s Leading Thoughts and lectures, where Steiner outlined the idea of the School of Spiritual Science, as the starting point for his reflections. At the time, it was surprising that Steiner placed at the center the karmic figure of Thomas Aquinas, whose philosophy was “reignited” by anthroposophy as a spiritual science interwoven with natural science. Selg spoke lovingly at the beginning of the conference, in awareness of the historical conscience: “How does one live with something that one does not fully understand?” His concern was that the School of Spiritual Science remain a matter close to the heart, not only in its outward activities but also inwardly.
Warmth Makes Thinking Fluid
In the evening, those responsible for the Medical Section and the Natural Science Section presented highlights from their fields of work. How should we shape the science and healing art of living beings in the face of increasing technological dominance, electronic patient records, and “sub-nature in the consulting room?” was Marion Debus’ theme. Thomas Hardtmuth pursued a “central question of the 21st century: What is life?” with the observation that self-organization in both cosmic and neural networks proceeds according to similar principles—there are “universal nanoparticles of life” in galaxies and brain cells. Matthias Rang took up the thread with the question: How do we understand the dead? Quantum physics developed in parallel to anthroposophy in the first third of the twentieth century, and in its own way, led to the point where spiritual science could then point the way forward. To do this, it is necessary to overcome dead thinking, or at least to first comprehend it. When I think of myself in terms of atoms, then I cannot “be”; I stand before an “abyss of non-being” (Steiner) and, in a sense, I recognize my own death. I must therefore make my thinking fluid, and according to Matthias Rang, this can only be done in nature through warmth. Here and in the next contributions by Vesna Forštnerič Lesjak on the principles of action of a “physiology of freedom” and Karin Michael on “embryology,” it became clear what an independent School of Spiritual Science would like to achieve as a unity in diversity. What is already in the air in the sciences, as current research results and questions, should be grounded from a spiritual scientific perspective and thus made more deeply understandable. If “the center falls apart” (Steiner), the etheric heart must be strengthened.
From Contemporary Phenomena to the Future
The active participation of everyone, not just presenters, was invited. At the end of the first day, Karin Michael addressed the participants, “We need your thoughts, your warmth, and your questions.” The conference came into its own when it was less about evoking history or attitudes and more about describing contemporary phenomena. Thus, the substance continued to grow on Saturday morning. Constanza Kaliks drew attention to contemporary pedagogical insights. What Steiner gave to the original teaching faculty of the first Waldorf School lives on today in a different form in the world. In the “epistemologies of the South,” for example, flexible forms of thinking are being developed for people who bring different cultural experiences with them. It is often easy to criticize things, for example, poverty, when one is not affected by them. Steiner considers the pre-birth period when he indicates that every child brings with them hidden experiences that can remain inexpressible. A similar gesture can be observed in participatory action research. Here, it is “only” about what we bring with us from this life, but fundamentally it is also about respect for the “knowledge of the learner.” Constanza Kaliks contrasted two relationships to truth: one can see the truth in oneself and then “apply” this truth to reality, or one can seek truth in reality. The heart of a collegium beats in the latter form.
Jan Göschel followed this by describing how, in 1861, both the concept of curative education and a fossil of Archaeopteryx, an intermediate form between a lizard and a bird, were discovered. Using this transitional animal, he described how different stages of development are present simultaneously in an evolving organism and are in a processual relationship with one another. The “lizardness” is in the head; what is new comes from the limbs in the Archaeopteryx. In humans, too, there are aspects of physicality that have their own temporality. Göschel unfolded the social and curative educational relevance of these discoveries. Where these two areas of research meet, a question arises: How do I remain connected to myself, and how do I come into contact with the world through its physicality? Rudolf Steiner predicted a future in which empathy would become an immediate activity, an encounter with the essence of another being. This requires unconditional respect for the inner life of others.
This was echoed in the contribution by Stefan Hasler, who showed that in music and eurythmy, such an encounter with the being of another person—and indeed with the being of music and the arts—is a balancing act. He created blackboard drawings to illustrate that the essence of an etheric movement is actually almost impossible to grasp, “perhaps like Pentecost.”
A Poem as a Handshake
The overall conceptual rather than dialogical quality of many lectures carried a certain risk of overwhelming the audience. However, this was always averted by presenting symptoms of the times, where contemporary phenomena were interpreted spiritually, not just—as is so often the case elsewhere—evaluated negatively. Nathaniel Williams, for example, sought to achieve this empathy on behalf of the Youth Section. He focused on today’s screen culture. Where else but within a community of knowledge, such as the spiritual sciences, can we respond to the subliminal distress of young people and help them escape from their “prison”? To do this, we must be genuinely interested and creatively engaged. Ariane Eichenberg, representing the Section for the Literary Arts and Humanities, also presented a symptom of our times, namely, voice cloning (machine-imitated human voice). She emphasized that the task of the Section’s work was to recognize “what the spiritual world wants in regard to certain developments.”
Referring to the German youth movement of the early twentieth century, Williams said that young people at that time were searching for people and only found (external) information. Ariane Eichenberg noted that today, too, in the abundance of external skills and superficial techniques in the field of speech, we are losing its essence, the consciousness of its inner side: it is relationship-forming, transformative, and creative in a new way every time. But if, as in voice cloning, the connection between body, soul, and spirit no longer exists, then we must ask even more subtle questions and pay attention to the being behind the speech, the one who is speaking: what being am I encountering? Ariane Eichenberg presented a positive counter-concept in relation to Paul Celan, whose poetry was written concurrently with the development of the computer. For Celan, a poem was “a handshake,” an expression and encounter with a unique soul. In the poem Einmal (EINMAL, / da hörte ich ihn, / da wusch er die Welt . . . .” [(ONCE, / I heard him then, / he washed the world then]), the lyrical ‘I,’ who at the beginning is separated from God, has by the end migrated into the verses of the poem itself: “. . . ichten. Licht war. Rettung” [‘I’-ing. Light was. Salvation.]
Into the Night with the “Garden of Light”
The evening was rounded off by a performance of the “Garden of Light” by the Goetheanum Eurythmy Ensemble, which opened the soul realm to the night. It was a wonderful artistic experience. There was a moment of discomfort, however, when the texts of the Nazi resistance fighters Hans and Sophie Scholl, taken from their personal letters and diaries, were stylized through speech formation. It was done in a way that was appropriate for the first two parts of the performance on Mani and Perceval, but which seemed artistically indiscreet in this part of the program. This unintentionally worked against what had been established and sensitized in the previous lectures through the anthroposophical method: a respect for the experiences of others, experiences that become speech in a very specific, individual way, or simply fall silent and remain unspoken. The speech formation was undoubtedly of the highest quality and with the best artistic intentions, but perhaps diary entries, especially when written against a tragic political and historical backdrop, cannot be recited in the same way as other texts using speech formation—it might need to be done in a more circumspect, restrained manner. (This comment is not meant as criticism or artistic reproach, but as a question, a reflection.)
Waiting When the Image is Silent
On Sunday morning, Christiane Haid developed some basic motifs for processes in the visual arts. This was also an indirect commentary on artificial intelligence, insofar as it is now also used for art production. Based on Steiner’s view of the aesthetics of Goethe and Schiller, as well as her own paradigmatic painting process, Haid showed how art is always a dialogue. It’s not a matter of implementing an idea in the material, but rather the idea is already in the material. First, there’s an empty canvas, and I carefully feel my way and put something down. But what emerges from this, what does it tell me as I continue? What comes to me? “When the image is silent, I have to wait.” As I continue working, I sense whether something “belongs” or not. It’s a paradox: we know it and at the same time we don’t. We cannot proceed mechanically. It is a process of the soul that manifests itself physically. In this respect, Steiner understood every discipline as an art, where we lovingly take up what is given and lead it into a process of transformation, into self-liberation. (And this is how, in education, we can also help children come into their own.)
Here, and above all in Eduardo Rincón’s engaging and optimistic lecture, the inner connection, the esotericism of the twelve Sections shone through, supported by the flow of the previous day’s lectures. It was deeply inspiring to experience how even humus in agriculture (“compost is art”) can form a bridge motif to contemporary art, just as poetry had previously done with neural networks. Ueli Hurter subsequently performed a feat of quick-witted improvisation, a performative work of art of the moment, when he was forced by time constraints to condense his prepared presentation spontaneously, implementing and shaping it in a charming and thoroughly convincing manner.
How Do We Get Our Hands Dirty?
A conference becomes dynamic and does not exhaust itself in redundancies when personal statements open up space for the transpersonal, for what is interesting to everyone. In some of the specialist colloquiums held on the two mornings of Pentecost, which naturally varied in intensity and were ultimately the only explicit islands of dialogue at the event, a divide occasionally became apparent. For example, the longing for the “world,” for exchange, is often articulated in a circle, without intending to prevent this exchange itself. It’s articulated in a world that is perceived as one’s own and in a language that is also one’s own, which sometimes no longer observes itself, no longer questions itself, no longer “hears” itself. As if the world that must be cleansed by the Creator in Celan’s poem were dirty. Or is a living spirit washing away the overly pure, the clinically pure, the artificial? Is it remaking the world by enabling every human ‘I’ to become creatively communicative from within itself? So that we, too, as anthroposophists, can get our hands dirty with heartfelt joy and engage with the world empathetically instead of acting sectarian?
Much of what is wrong in social reality stems from the fact that afterwards, in conversations about a conversation that has taken place, people complain that this or that should have been done better, instead of being quick-witted enough to notice and address the dynamics of a conversation in the moment—the contributions of individuals, the integration of what others have said into one’s own statements—and intervene courageously. As a result, what is required at the meta-level is often neglected in the actual implementation. But I have to activate the meta-level within myself, the conversation leader within myself, and assist the formal “leader” of the event. During lunch, a conference participant who works in organizational development said that, with a little self-discipline, it’s actually quite easy to put aside your own important points for the sake of the common dialogue.
In the closing plenary session, Sonja Zausch commendably addressed once again the necessity of such attentive, fundamentally “inclusive” communication. After all, she said, it is also important in anthroposophical institutions to take new employees seriously, who may not be familiar with anthroposophy yet, but who are “on the doorstep” and to include them.
The Most Modern Form of Inwardness
On Sunday afternoon, all twelve Sections had made their contributions. The last were the Social Science Section and the Mathematical-Astronomical Section, for which Oliver Conradt dealt with comets and the myths surrounding them, the spiritual impulses they bring, and asked the question, “Which comet brings the organs that allow us to recognize the sun as the center of life?” In his contributions on the situation in “general” society, Gerald Häfner made a strong appeal to the audience, drawing analogies with that of the “General Anthroposophical” Society. Using examples from his own political negotiations, he posed the pressing question, including to himself, “Have we done what was necessary?” Häfner was concerned with “the law as the most beautiful, most modern form of inner life,” with becoming just to one another, with transforming dead, judgmental dogmatism into a living dogmatism that is able to “see” our fellow human beings in all their rich experience and also in their wounds, instead of assigning blame. Here, in a vulnerable way, the history of the Sections themselves seemed to reveal itself, and injuries within the spiritual science movement were linked to the wounds of the world.
The conference then turned into a large plenary session on stage, with participants reporting on the colloquiums. Ultimately, this was also about reverence for the being of the other, which they may not yet be able to express as they would like to. As one participant from Australia said, “I heard the cry.” She had perceived a strong will to take action and transform in her group, perhaps one could also say: a longing for Pentecost, but at the same time, a certain helplessness. From the one-on-one conversations they had participated in, another participant became aware that certain current trends in the world, such as artificial intelligence, filled many with fear and concern.
The morning of Pentecost Monday provided a nice conclusion. Section leaders shared what had moved them about their colleagues’ contributions. In terms of format, this also represented a gesture of trust on the part of the Section members with the conference participants, who witnessed the organizers’ search for a Pentecostal spirit in higher education, a spirit in which the work of others is not a thorn in one’s side but a driving force in one’s heart, not an obstacle but something sacred. Perhaps this was different in the past; perhaps people were more resistant to it before. And the witnesses, the listeners, helped to create the Pentecostal atmosphere through their resonance.
Groundbreaking Acts of Will
Jan Göschel emphasized that he already sees the transdisciplinary approach, currently very popular in research, as being present in the anthroposophical Sections. The importance of the middle level, the goal of harmonizing the forces of thinking, feeling, and willing, was also perceived as a kind of “thorough bass” for the conference. Karin Michael referred back to Christiane Haid’s comments: “Even as a doctor, when you first meet a patient, you stand before them as if before a blank canvas. After the initial assessment, the first impression, and then the diagnosis, you often have to pause and enter into a dialogue with the patient in order to arrive at an intuition in a second step, in which you also have to question and sacrifice diagnostic results in order to finally develop an inspiration that reveals the meaning of the illness.”
The flyer for the conference, which had a title that was somewhat unwieldy for outsiders but inwardly revealing, explicitly referred to “the Whitsun community of disciples… as an ideal image.” Was the Gospel actually present? There is no theological Section for good reasons, and yet the reference comes from a Christological context. Thus, one could perceive that religion was perhaps implicitly at work in the humility and piety of the researcher, as a sense of wonder. There were no discordant notes on the podiums, only goodwill throughout. There was no need for gestures to moderate tensions because the conference as a whole was characterized by a tentative and cautious, conciliatory and searching tone. Constanza Kaliks recalled that Steiner once spoke of “groundbreaking acts of will” that needed to be done. In the end, there was also talk of the “Word that plows,” which takes time to take effect and does not simply “pass you by.” Perhaps, in retrospect, the signature of this conference will be experienced as a first groundbreaking, a first step on a path of transformation, a first ringing of the bell. Attendance was low, but the spiritual and social impulse is all the more sought after. The conference was unsatisfactory in a good sense. It was rich without wasting or fully unfolding its richness; it was perceptible as a first hint, a seed, a potential for the future—entirely Pentecostal.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Whitsun conference 2025, Goetheanum. Photo: Xue Li
