being human - summer-fall 2020

The Foundation Stone Meditation as Gift, Friend, Helper, and Key

Here are four contributions from members of Sections of the School for Spiritual Science, toward a deeper engagement with Rudolf Steiner’s Foundation Stone Meditation: Rudiger Janisch, General Section; Sherry Wildfeuer, Agriculture Section; Helen Lubin, Performing Arts Section; Frank Agrama, Section for the Spiritual Striving of Youth

The meditation was given during the Christmas Foundation Meeting for the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society, from 12/25/1923 to 1/1/1924.

The text is given first, from a new brochure.

Rudiger Janisch, General Section

At the Christmas conference in 1923, Rudolf Steiner introduced an activity that can be taken up by every human being. Through this activity they can find their spiritual essence within their soul and body. In this process, they can also find the way to the spiritual essence of other human beings and to the spirit in the world. The activity is meditating and contemplating the foundation for a new human society from now into the future—a community built on the power of unselfishness. The activity is to speak, think, and enact words which are intimately connected to every person.

Numerous people have explored and several people have shared ways of working with these words, which are seed words to begin a fundamentally new way of looking at human beings and the world, words known as the Foundation Stone Meditation.

In the light of working within the Section for Anthroposophy, common to all, the General Anthroposophical Section, I would like to suggest a few further possibilities for working with this meditation:

1.

This approach is relevant if there is a person or group of people in need of support or with whom I have a conflict. I visualize those in question as vividly as possible, best at a regular set time and for a determined period: three days, a week, a month, etc. I can also add to the visualization a certain space, a room, a building into which I have invited that person or those people to add the feeling of protection and safety. Such a space can be imagined as a hut for contemplation, a chapel for devotional practice, or even a building, the temple of knowledge, visualized for example like the first Goetheanum. Beholding those people within the imagined space, I can then speak quietly to them, either outwardly or inwardly, the words of the Foundation Stone Meditation. This disciplined approach could be a valuable contribution to harmonizing or even healing karma, a contribution to world peace.

2.

In living with the Foundation Stone Meditation, the following questions might arise: Who speaks these words initially? Is it one source or several? Or is it one source which speaks through different beings? And another question: Who is addressed as the “Human Soul”?

Initially one thinks of any human soul being addressed and that is certainly so, and at the same time, who is the “Human Soul”? Is this a specific identity which all human souls are a part of?

In the Curative Education course, Rudolf Steiner makes a distinction between the reflected or mirrored soul life (all that we experience and perceive between waking up and falling asleep) and the permanent soul life (that which spiritually configures our bodily constitution, the supersensible members of our being). Could it be that both of these aspects are addressed? Then: who is this “Human Soul”? Could it be that being which we are spiritually part of, which is woven spiritually into our constitution? And who is it then who brings to our awareness the reality of our supersensible spiritual, soul, bodily nature?

I do not mean to find a clear, defined answer. I mean that when we live with these questions, do the words of this meditation make visible someone who is hidden within these words and who could become a friend of ours, even a guide for the ways of our life?

3.

The central task of the School of Spiritual Science is research in the field of the spirit. Many questions, concerns, problems, needs of our current earthly situation are so complex that it needs perspectives from various fields of experience. Not one alone, but a right number together can more fruitfully find ways to help. Such a collaborative way of working has been described by several people like Karl König, Bernhard Lievegoed, Otto Scharmer, Jan Goeschel, and others.

As a first step, someone in the group articulates a research question. Then, together we need to form a picture of all that has led to the current situation. This step can be done under the wings of the first stanza of the Foundation Stone Meditation.

The next step is reflecting on this picture. What does it tell us? In the light of the spirit, how can we understand what lies before us? Such a question can point towards the inner gesture of what needs to happen. This step can be founded in the second stanza of the Foundation Stone Meditation.

If these two steps are attempted towards the evening, we can carry the questions, pictures, and thoughts into the night, to invite helping spirit beings to collaborate with us when we continue the process after waking on the next day or over several days. We want to be attentive to what speaks out of the night.

Whenever the quest continues, the third stanza of the Foundation Stone Meditation can open this space to bring together ideas for what can be answers to our questions. This segment can be concluded with the words from the fourth part of the Foundation Stone Meditation. Of course, what follows is actually doing what this process has led us to: developing models and prototypes of solutions. The Foundation Stone Meditation is like a helper, a facilitator.

4.

When Rudolf Steiner introduced the Foundation Stone Meditation, he pointed to the existential challenge each one faces as a student on the path to self-knowledge. The challenge is to build the bridge between the deepest inner esoteric striving and the working in the public, representing anthroposophy in life. After pointing out this challenge Rudolf Steiner only says each one has to solve this challenge for themselves. Without further reference, he then continues introducing the Foundation Stone Meditation and the possibility to work meditatively with the rhythms which he gives day after day beginning on a Wednesday.

Working in this sequence, with the rhythms from Wednesday to the following Tuesday is like having a particular sequence of sounds: Ih, Oh, Ah, Uh, Au, Ei, Eh. This can indicate certain mysteries of the human being and the cosmos.

If we were to start with the Monday rhythm the sequence of the rhythms would compare to the sequence of the sounds:

Monday: Ei, Eh, Ih, Oh, Ah, Uh, Au.

Tuesday: Eh, Ih, Oh, Ah, Uh, Au, Ei

Thursday: Oh, Ah, Uh, Au, Ei, Eh, Ih

Friday: Ah, Uh, Au, Ei, Eh, Ih, Oh

Saturday: Uh, Au, Ei, Eh, Ih, Oh, Au

In looking at these seven sequences, it becomes obvious that each sequence constitutes a different “word” though they are always the same sounds. It is the same principle according to which we form the many words in our languages. Only in this case, the words and phrases which are highlighted from the Foundation Stone Meditation as a rhythm are like one sound and the different starting point of the sequence of the seven rhythms brings about a different “word”. This process would be a key for learning “words” which reveal the mystery of the human being and its connection with the cosmos.

If some enthusiastic researchers in the spirit would take up this quest, a sharing of the fruits would be a beautiful celebration of knowledge, a beginning of a new script.

These exercises are just a few indications for working with the Foundation Stone Meditation from the point of view of the General Section of the School for Spiritual Science. Our life stories, our destinies, Steiner’s Christology, among other aspects of anthroposophy, are essential to all the professional and practical fields as guiding background and toward a common understanding of what it means to be a human into the future.

Sherry Wildfeuer, Agriculture Section

There are many correlations between the Foundation Stone Meditation , which expresses in words the ideal archetype of the human being, and Rudolf Steiner’s eight lectures on agriculture, which are the basis of biodynamics. This is not surprising since, as he said in the first lecture, “Seen from whatever perspective you choose, agriculture touches on every single aspect of human life.” Just a few of these correspondences will be touched upon here.

The first panel of the meditation turns to the mysteries of space and life. It calls on us to “Practice Spirit Recalling,” to look back into the spiritual evolution of the earth and humanity. There we discover that our own I has its source in the same spiritual beings that engendered all of the living world of nature. Thus, we do not confront nature as a stranger but as deeply kindred to our own being. The elemental beings “hear” this. Their perceiving is simultaneous with their understanding, in contrast to our perceiving, which requires a corresponding concept to complete the knowledge process. Through the call at the end of this and the next two panels, “May human beings hear it!” we are enjoined to find the spiritual concepts that correspond to our outer experiences of nature, and in the Agriculture Course we are given a wealth of such concepts to assist our knowing.

The second panel addresses the mysteries of time and rhythm. It calls on us to “Practice Spirit Sensing,” to see beyond the surface of things into their inner being. As an example of this, in the Agriculture Course we are led to experience the seasons as not merely a sequence of changes or even alternating conditions but as the breathing of a living earth. In winter its life forces are inhaled, and in summer they are exhaled into the atmosphere and wider universe. Rudolf Steiner leads us to experience the mineral, plant, animal, and human realms in relation to the polarities of influences from the three planets closest to the earth (including the moon as a planet) and the three planets beyond the sun. Their rhythmic interaction creates life as we know it. And an example of “spirit sensing” is his statement that “It is easy for farmers to become clairsentient with regard to smell.”

The third panel enters the mystery of knowing with the call to “Practice Spirit Beholding.” In the agriculture lectures, the evolution of consciousness is addressed, validating the older instincts as having been quite specific and reliable, but he warns that

We are also faced with a great inner transformation in nature. The natural gifts, naturally inherited knowledge, traditional medicines, and so on that have been passed down from ancient times are all losing their value. We need to acquire new knowledge in order to be able to enter into all the interrelationships of these things…

In lecture three, after describing the inner nature of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, oxygen, and hydrogen, the chemical constituents of protein, Rudolf Steiner speaks at length about meditation:

Let’s ask ourselves what we are actually doing when we meditate. In the Orient, people used to do it in a particular way. We in the West, in Europe, do it differently. Our kind of meditation is only indirectly dependent on the breathing process; we live in the rhythm of concentration and meditation. Nevertheless, what we do in devoting ourselves to these soul exercises still has a bodily counterpart, even though it is very delicate and subtle. In a very subtle way, the regular pace of our breathing, which is so closely tied to human life, is always changed during meditation. While meditating, we retain somewhat more carbon dioxide than we do in a state of normal waking consciousness. A little extra carbon dioxide always remains behind in us. Usually we are eager to thrust the full force of the carbon dioxide out there, into the environment that is filled with nitrogen [which he has previously described as the carrier of cosmic astrality]. We hold something back.

You see, if you bump your head against something hard—a table, for instance—you will only be aware of your own pain. If, however, you rub against it more gently, you will become aware of the surface of the table and so on. It is the same when you meditate. You gradually grow into an experience of the nitrogen that surrounds you. That is the real process involved in meditation. Everything becomes known, including everything that lives in nitrogen. And this nitrogen is a very smart fellow who can teach you about what Mercury and Venus and the rest of them are doing, because it knows these things and is sensitive to them. Activities like meditation are based on very real processes.

Because Christ is not spoken of directly in the agriculture lectures, one might wonder how to find a correlation to the fourth panel of the Foundation Stone Meditation. The great ideal of the farmer, as described in these lectures, is the holy task of creating a “farm individuality.” Supported by the three practices that enable one to begin to “read the book of nature,” through uniting one’s own I with the I of the world, a truly new being can arise. It engages the mineral, plant, animal and human realms in a composite living organism that can gradually develop into a unique individuality. Such places, where the biodynamic preparations are used and where human beings must continually strive for harmony to sustain the activities, can become centers from which the Good can radiate on earth.

Helen Lubin, Performing Arts Section

From one point of view the Performing Arts Section carries a special task in relation to the Foundation Stone Mediation in that eurythmists and speech artists have the possibility, or carry the unique responsibility, to perform the verse for others. By manifesting the living being of the verse through the sounds and rhythms of speech and through the forms, colors, and gestures of eurythmy, these performances of the Foundation Stone serve the ongoing life of the Michaél School and the Christmas Foundation Meeting in a particular way. Eurythmy Spring Valley, for example, performs the verse regularly, following artistic indications given by Rudolf Steiner that were passeddown directly from the Goetheanum Stage and translated into English eurythmy. Many other eurythmists and speech artists also practice, research, or perform one or another or all four panels when time and opportunities allow. Through the ongoing activity of Foundation Stone workshops and performances, eurythmy and speech are able to support many other people’s meditative experience of the verse, providing a means for the power of its living qualities to be embodied and expressed.

Frank Agrama, Section for the Spiritual Striving of Youth

Poet and social entrepreneur Frank Agrama works with an intrepid crew of young and old at the Elderberries Café in Los Angeles. They open the Café each morning with a recitation of the Foundation Stone Meditation. Frank’s work at the Café with young people as well as he, himself, form one epicenter of the youth section activity in North America. Here follows Frank’s consideration of the Foundation Stone Meditation on behalf of the spiritual striving of youth.

Lobbing a Stone across the threshold, with a blindfold and a prayer:

3 minutes, do I have 3 minutes? One for my will, as it meets up with grandfather Sky, speaking, “the clouds are remembering.”

Another minute finds my ears ringing, in waking conscience, can this flickering light, be helped into a billowing, by heart? By weaving rhythms in this our planetarium, day after day the rhythms gift us to open, wider and water, to deepen the floating world.

We invite all the friends to come help, my teachers, my creators, my stylist, the beings who move nature, and where it’s like the costume in their third grade recital. We share out this invitation, sending it pulsing from here through to the ends of all things. I hear it out loud, and how deeply do I hear it inwardly?

Chr-chri-Cry, woah, are we saying the name of the all-inclusive one, I stumbled o’er his name, though how many times I have said Christ. This is not a prayer so much, is it?

We recite the Foundation Stone Meditation before we open up the café, standing in the doorway by morning light, the boulevard before us runs east-west.

We spoke it while driving south to the child detention center at the border, at the threshold between Americas, where a little line begets children to be put in cages, a line we stumble o’er, a line we stand in for hours in the hot sun. Mustn’t we transform this line into a spirit-seed? Is it not a seed for Christ’s will to find breath in, and encircle our Round, hold hands and sway?

We dig each day, to deepen our roots, the soil in a desert. Planted seeds, heads in spirit ground, trying to see in the dark, to see our thoughts, as Angels come wafting from behind with gentle smiling garments to deal o’er our shoulders, “Try this one on.”

The light and warmth streaming into young people, it pours in and surrounds the soul, the whole space, the whole river of the self, and stones move in the current, the babbling experience of soul seeking its form, with a choice to swim upstream, in a school. Then a scattering, then a finding again, wave after wave. When it comes to the social-spiritual-striving of young people, you can hear the murmur of the past, the frothing of the future, and hear the poetic-chaotic-crystallizing silent present. With singing purpose, linking up to our task.

May we find the words speaking out of us, as living beings of love, that shimmer in fresh movement.