Risk, Opportunity, and Responsibility Tim Nadelle In uniting the Anthroposophical Movement with the Anthroposophical Society, Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery deed during the 1923/24 Christmas Conference generated a living potency which works into the future. This potency manifests as the potential that, at any moment, esotericism can spring to life, whenever two or more members come together with an intention to engage with anthroposophy’s astonishing promise. When we meet such that Anthroposophia walks with us, lifting our thinking, feeling, and intentions, if only a little, if only for the duration of our time together, this potency quickens our gatherings. It does not always happen. Yet its manifestation does not depend on the Goetheanum or any national society or formal organization at all. All forms have a tendency to rigidify. It depends upon each of us to cultivate the ground upon which the potency can blossom. Sustaining the opportunity takes grit. We need to be sufficiently self-aware to overcome what in ourselves stands in opposition. We need the faith and hopeful energy to embrace our brothers and sisters with open hearts. We need to resist temptations to degenerate into superficiality, intellectuality. This sounds like a lot to remember during a conversation. In fact, it only takes a moment of reverent preparation. Then the lively, expectant, concentrated energy of our gatherings opens doors through which angels can enter. And our becoming is supported by spiritual helpers, including human beings who have crossed the threshold. Given that this potency is so manifestly available to us, it saddens me deeply when I consider the terrible world test to which our friend, Thomas O’Keefe, alludes, the test of wakefulness. For it seems that, by virtue of our teacher’s great gift, members of the Anthroposophical Society carry a responsibility to those who have not yet felt called to the path of knowledge, and a correlative responsibility to the Spirit of Truth. Humanity did not pass the wakefulness test of recent years. Humanity clamored for sleep and insisted upon sleep with all the dark powers at sleep’s disposal. And 66 • being human
these dark powers set us a different and opposite test, a test of horrifying and epoch-defining import, of willing descent and degradation. We passed their test and made active use of the tools they made available. After the First World War, Steiner wrote and lectured on the ideals which underlie the political, cultural, and economic sectors. A society is healthy to the extent that it protects and cultivates these ideals. During the recent time of masking, lockdowns, and forced experimental injections, all three sectors have been systematically attacked. Instead of protecting our rights, our political leaders, particularly in the Western world, and with only a few exceptions, worked enthusiastically to dismantle them. Our rights to bodily autonomy, travel, freedom of speech, livelihood, and even life itself were attacked. (See Edward Dowd’s book, Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,1 for a sampling of young lives which were snuffed out through the injections.) So much for equality and the rights sphere. Instead of encouraging diversity of thought and research into causes and treatments of symptoms defined as Covid-19, medical journals and universities and social media enforced uniformity of thought. Medical doctors lost their licenses for (successfully) treating patients using long-established protocols such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. (See Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health2 for references to many studies proving the efficacy of these protocols and the fraudulent means used to discredit them.) So much for freedom and the spiritual-cultural sector. Lockdowns forced small businesses into bankruptcy, while transnational businesses like Walmart, Costco, and Amazon prospered. Other government restrictions wreaked havoc on global supply chains, which have become profoundly interdependent over decades of economic collaboration. The first chapters of James Rick1 Skyhorse Publishing, 2022. 2 Skyhorse Publishing, 2021.
