Theme of the Year 2006: Development of Heart Thinking

Understanding Otherness – Relationship to Christ

The world and our fellow human beings have become alien to us to such a degree today that without shared understanding a real meeting is hardly possible any more. Understanding what is other than ourselves requires empathy and acuity as well as effort. It asks that we engage our whole person.

Last year we turned our attention from the larger outer aspect of thinking (theme of the year for 2004/05: cosmic intelligence) to the inner expansion of thinking, when the life of feeling and thinking unite in such a way that “hearts begin to have thoughts.”

Light-Breathing

The experience of thought content is first and foremost a spiritual experience within the human being. This acquires a new dimension when it unites with the other aspect of reality: with the sense world. In this context, Rudolf Steiner forms a concept that refers to the human rhythmic system – ‘light breathing’: We can be attentive not only to the physiological after-image of a sense phenomenon, but, in a further sense, also to what is called forth in us as the soul-spiritual after-image of a sense phenomenon (The Mission of the Archangel Michael, lecture of November 30, 1919, GA 194). It is interesting to see this process as a breathing process, particularly in connection with heart thinking.

If one follows up on this, one is led to the discovery that the great breathing process of the earth, the course of the year, presents an exact picture of what takes place as a spiritual breathing within the soul. In this way, the experience of the rhythm of nature takes on meditative, cosmic-human significance. We bring our human existence into relationship to the earth and its cosmic surroundings.

This is significant not only for our own experience but also for the earth, from our intervention in ecological matters right up to a connection to the Christ being united with the surrounding of the earth, to the spirit of the earth. It is worth coming to a close grasp of how heart thinking can be stimulated and deepened through inner participation in the course of the year. Calendar of the Soul forms the basis for an attempt of this kind, as do the lectures The Four Seasons and the Archangels, which are read in many places at festival times, and the lecture of October 15, 1923 [published in 1957 in vol. 4 (The Michael Inspiration from Michaelmas – The Festivals and Their Meaning — seven lectures on Michaelmas) and in the entire Festivals and Their Meaning), and in the 1981 edition of The Festivals and Their Meaning (29 lectures on Christmas, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost, and Michaelmas), all in GA 229].

Course of the Year and Social Relations

A further aspect from the lectures The Cycle of the Year as Breathing-Process of the Earth and Michaelmas and the Soul Forces of Man [both cycles are in GA 223] can be added: Rudolf Steiner characterizes the movement for social threefolding, which failed in terms of its original intention, as a test of whether “the Michael thought is strong enough in a number of people […] to really be felt in its full time-forming strength….” An aspect of this Michael thought is experiencing the course of the year, to which is tied the forming of social relations. Through the connection of these themes one is right in the middle of today's tasks pertaining to social and ecological issues. One is in the midst of large public issues as well as of inner anthroposophical concerns.

Just as there is a reason that the Soul Calendar was published in the year of the founding of the Anthroposophical Society, it is also not a coincidence that Rudolf Steiner presents The Festivals and Their Meaning as a central theme in 1923, a year concerned with the consolidation of the Anthroposophical Society and with preparation for the Christmas Conference. │ Johannes Kühl, for the School Collegium

Translation by Helen Lubin as published in Anthroposophy Worldwide No. 2, 2006. Here with further information on the lectures referenced.

Other Themes: 2006 Theme of the Year 2007 Theme of the Year 2008 Theme of the Year

Thank you to the following organizations for the links to the on-line documents by Rudolf Steiner: the Rudolf Steiner Archive, the Rudolf Steiner Press, and SteinerBooks.