Breathing, Thinking, Sleeping & Dying
Fri, Feb 24 2012 6:30 PM to Sat, Feb 25 2012 9:30 PM
Location: Calgary, Albert, CANADACategory: - Canada, Steiner's Basic Books, Anthroposophy-General
Movement with Diane Robitelle and conversations with Emanuel Blosser to look at how we breathe back and forth across the threshold experiences of thinking, sleeping and dying.
Breathing, Thinking, Sleeping/Waking & Dying/Birthing
Feb. 24 - 25, 2012
St. Barnabas Anglican Church, Upper Hall
1407 – 7th Ave. NW, Calgary, Alberta
Phone: Diana Zinter, 403-668-1239
In chapter one of his book, Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner observes how the human being is composed of four bodies. By mineral body he means all that is left in the corpse. By etheric or life body he means all we share with the world of plants that takes hold of the mineral substance and fashions it into a living form which unlike the forms of the minerals can produce seeds that will again grow to resemble the parent. He observes how the plant forms are continually shedding their mineral substances and taking up new substance. By astral body he means all that we share with the animal kingdoms where in addition to a life body that takes up mineral substance and forms it into living being, the life form is in addition fashioned into a vessel to which a life of consciousness with desires and sensations can be joined. Movement, digestion, blood and breath come into full bloom. While the plant kingdom has flexibility, osmosis, sap and photosynthesis which the mineral kingdom can’t do on its own, the animal kingdom metamorphoses these processes into higher forms to serve the life of consciousness.
By human kingdom he means all the beings who have the thoughts that created them within their consciousness instead of outside of it, so that god-like creativity can appear in human actions when compared to the activity of the animals. As sap is to blood between the plant and animal kingdoms, so cumulative instinct is to memory and intellect between the animal and human kingdoms. As the life body makes something of the minerals that they can’t do on their own, and the astral body fashions the life body into the forms of sensation which serve its desires, so when memory and intellect appear, self-activity begins to create forms of consciousness which serve the individuality of the human being and form the ego body.
If a separation is created between the life body and the mineral body, death occurs and the corpse is left. Do the life, astral and ego bodies then cease to exist? When a separation occurs between the astral body and the life body, sleep occurs, consciousness is lost, and a plant like living form is left. Do the astral body and the ego body cease to exist? When a separation is made between the astral body and the ego body, consciousness is maintained. Does the ego and its self-activity cease to exist or does it enter an out-of-body world form of existence?
This study seeks to create an objectivity in the feeling life for the four kingdoms of nature and further form these feelings into organs of perception for how there is a breathing between incarnated and excarnated views of reality in thinking, sleeping and dying.
SCHEDULE:
Friday
6:30 – 7:15 PM– MOVEMENT with Diane Robitelle
7:15 – 9:30 PM – Conversation: Observing the Four Kingdoms with Our Feelings with Emanuel Blosser
Saturday
9:00 - 9:45 AM – MOVEMENT with Diane Robitelle
9:45 – 12 NOON – Conversation: How Thoughts and Feelings Create Imagination with Emanuel Blosser
LUNCH – bring a sack lunch
1:00 – 1:45 PM – MOVEMENT with Diane Robitelle
2:00 – 4:30 PM–Conversation: Observing the Self-Activity of Inspiration Consciousnesswith Emanuel Blosser
DINNER OUT
6:30 – 7:15 PM – MOVEMENT with Diane Robitelle
7:15 – 9:30PM –Conversation: Building the Objective Reality of Intuition Consciousness with Emanuel Blosser
PRESENTERS:
Emanuel Blosser has studied Rudolf Steiner’s basic books since 1981. His research has focused on how to create thoughts and feelings that give the validity of observation and logic to spiritual and soul activity. He taught Foundation Year courses at the Waldorf Institute of Southeast Michigan from 2002 – 2006. Since moving to Edmonton in 2007 he has been employed at The Cross Cancer Institute doing mechanical design for new cancer therapy equipment. He is married and has twin sons, 26 years old.
Diane Robitelle has studied Steiner’s work and its artistic daughter movements since 1974. After graduating from Ithaca College School of Music, she studied at Emerson College, and received a Masters in Elem. Ed. at Adelphi University, Waldorf Institute. She studied at Beaver Run Camphill Special School Seminar, Tobias School of Art, London School of Eurythmy, and Spacial Dynamics Institute, receiving a Level 1 Certificate, and received certification in Eurythmy from Marjorie Spock For twenty years she taught in Waldorf schools, and currently teaches piano students while developing her career as a poet. She is married and lives in Edmonton.
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From Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner:
1. The Corporeal Nature of Man
We learn to know man s body through bodily senses, and the manner of observing it cannot differ from the way in which we learn to know other objects perceived by the senses. As we observe minerals, plants and animals, so can we also observe man. He is related to these three forms of existence. Like the minerals, he builds his body out of natural substances; like the plants, he grows and propagates his species; like the animals, he perceives the objects around him and builds up his inner experiences on the basis of the impressions they make on him. Thus, a mineral, a plant and an animal existence may be ascribed to man.
The differences in structure of minerals, plants and animals correspond with the three forms of their existence. It is this structure-the shape-that is perceived through the senses, and that alone can be called body. Now the human body is different from that of the animal. This difference must be recognized, whatever may otherwise be thought of the relationship of man to animals. Even the most extreme materialist who denies all soul cannot but admit the truth of this passage uttered by Carus in his Organon der Natur und des Geistes. The finer, inner construction of the nervous system and especially of the brain remains still an unsolved problem for the physiologist and the anatomist. That this concentration of structures ever increases in the animal kingdom and reaches in man a stage unequalled in any other being is a fully established fact-a fact that is of the deepest significance in regard to the mental evolution of man. Indeed, we may go so far as to say it is really a sufficient explanation of that evolution. Where, therefore, the structure of the brain has not developed properly, where its smallness and poverty are in evidence as in the case of microcephali and idiots, it goes without saying that we can no more expect the appearance of original ideas and of knowledge than we can expect the propagation of the species from persons with completely stunted reproductive organs. On the other hand, a strong and beautifully developed build of the whole man, and especially of the brain, will certainly not in itself take the place of genius but it will at any rate supply the first and indispensable condition for higher knowledge.
Just as one ascribes to the human body the three forms of existence, mineral, plant and animal, so one must ascribe to it a fourth-the distinctively human form. Through his mineral existence man is related to everything visible; through his plant-like existence to all beings that grow and propagate their species; through his animal existence to all those that perceive their surroundings and by means of external impressions have inner experiences; through his human form of existence he constitutes, even in regard to his body alone, a kingdom by himself.