A Reflection on Gift

by John Bloom

Surplus capital arises as a gift from productive economic activity. A work of art arises as a gift from productive spiritual/cultural activity. The surplus and the work of art are both “products” of will activity, applied intention, and, freed, will lives in the sphere of karma.

Surplus capital and work of art mark a liberation of human consciousness. Something has been freed up from matter to work in the world as spirit.

What we choose to do with that material container of free deed, the art object or the accounted bottom line—how we participate with it and toward what end—is another inquiry altogether.

Surplus capital returned to the cultural economy becomes transformed gift; it frees time and will activity.

What we experience of a work of art travels solely with us while the object remains in place.

The material value of the object is conventionally a matter of the economic marketplace; the spiritual and cultural value moves outside of space and time.

When I pluck a string on my guitar, a sound-tone is liberated from matter into spirit.

So, a sound-tone is perceived up to a point by our senses; our senses rematerialize the sound until it is no longer sense-perceptible.

The sound-tone itself continues past hearing into the music of the spheres.

A sound-tone is the bearer of pure freedom which over time and space shapes our evolving selves.

The generative will intention, what passed through my fingers in the pluck of the guitar, infuses the moral or karmic atmosphere from which spirit will return to matter.

This transformation from the physical to the sublime, and the return of the sublime into the physical, represents participation in a great cycle of gift.

John Bloom (john.bloom@anthroposophy.org) is General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America (US).

Van Gogh: Olive Trees