catch up and bring spiritual science into a meaningful and constructive engagement with the world, using the proper social tact? Can we speak a language steeped in spiritual science as a foundational framing context, and combine this with knowledge of cutting-edge, twentyfirst-century science and extensive familiarity with world events, as the comprehensive basis for this meaningful and urgent engagement with the world? This is not only needed in the sciences, but in all areas of life, especially social life, where the capacity to “bridge” is absolutely essential in order for spiritual science to permeate and heal the world. In conclusion, the greatest need in our time today is to engage in the battle for Truth. We can only succeed in
doing this if we have overcome the wound of Amfortas in ourselves and if we have awakened the Parsifal forces in our lives. Then, and only then, can we meaningfully stand in defense of the human being. And stand we will, together with the gods, to actualize the amazing future that awaits humanity. Nicanor Perlas is chairman of a large foundation helping over half a million micro-enterprising poor and the President of Solution Ecosystems Activator, which is installing large-scale societal threefolding initiatives in four towns in the Philippines. He is a key leader in the national resistance against totalitarian Covid mandates that is playing out in the Senate and the Supreme Court. For the national and global impact of his work, he received the UN Global 500 Award and the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. His website is www.covidcalltohumanity.org.
Heart Thoughts from the Christmas Conference John Beck Anthroposophy has the most impactful, fundamental, productive ideas in the world today. Cosmic in scope, intimate in quality, rooted in the depths of existence, they integrate themselves livingly into individual human consciousness to transform culture and guide evolution. Do we understand this thing “culture,” this bi-directional placenta which connects individual humans with humanity? Steiner’s own initiative—beyond education, health, healing the earth, elevating the arts—was toward a healthy global human civilization. For these ideas he could only take personal responsibility, since no one else—not even Marie Steiner or Ita Wegman—could embrace them comprehensively. He provided at the Christmas Conference “Statutes” based in reality. In describing the Society he placed before the members no future goals which they, as the Society, were not already taking up. The weight of the biggest initiative he would carry—which again reflected the reality. He expected to have another twelve years, a Jupiter cycle, to live. Finding members not up to the immediate tasks, he added no guidance in the fifteen months left him. He poured himself out for nine months, then lay at the foot of 34 • being human
his great sculptural group, continuing to follow the Christ path in what looked so much like a long crucifixion. In the Anthroposophical Society today we celebrate the Christmas Conference as if an immutable guidance. It is simplest to rely on the stenographed words (I give some page numbers for The Christmas Conference1 in this text), and on the “Statutes.” This fixed reliance, this literalism, may be a profound mistake. Celebrate this great event solemnly, reverently, and in awareness of the reality of 1923. What did that look like, the context of this Christmas Conference? In many ways the event was born out of failure. We need find no pessimism or despair in that. Failures belong to the first half of the “mystery of dying and becoming”; they ask us to die to illusions, rebirthing enthusiasm out of clearer sight. Dr. Steiner himself spelled out the context: “I have no hesitation in saying that the outer shelter for our gathering resembles nothing more than a shack erected amongst the ruins, a poor, a terribly poor shack of a home” (p. 45). The magnificent Goetheanum had burnt down at the beginning of the year; the arson was called for publicly, but 1 Anthroposophic Press, 1990.
