Brian Gray on the Foundation Year

By: Brian Gray

August 15, 2011

Category: Adult Education, Self-Development, Teacher Training, Waldorf Education, Anthroposophy-General, Arts, Steiner's Basic Books, Consciousness Studies

Full text of an interview for the fall 2011 edition of "being human"

Brian Gray is program director of "Foundations in Anthroposophy" at Rudolf Steiner College. The first section of this interview covers the nature of the "foundation year" and its particular form at Rudolf Steiner College. A second section briefly describes each of Rudolf Steiner's "basic books," and the third second imagines as a five-fold star the basic attributes of anthroposophy.

being human: “Foundation studies” occupy a central place in anthroposophical adult education, and Rudolf Steiner College is a longtime leader in that. What does the foundation program at Rudolf Steiner College aim to accomplish?

Brian Gray: We want to find meaning and purpose in life, but suffer from homesickness and amnesia. We can’t remember who we are, where we came from, who our friends are, or why we’re here. Our ‘prenatal intentions’ elude us; we’re not even sure there is a spiritual world. We have longings, dreams, ideas, visions, hopes, aspirations, and want to focus them toward achieving our goals. What goals are worthwhile? We want to change the world and work with a community of loving friends. We want to share our talents, insights and creativity, and develop new skills. We want to find our passions and do what we love. How do we find our way?

The Foundation Program at RSC helps students wrestle with such questions in a fruitful way. It provides tools and insights to help individuals search for their own answers. New possibilities begin to arise in daily and vocational life. The multifaceted worldview of anthroposophy provides solid foundations that can help us become human. The program stimulates broader interest in the world—we see it with new eyes, more open hearts, and greater clarity of thinking. Working together awakens new perceptions, deepens our inner life, strengthens our artistic creativity, and helps us find our right vocation. As we strive to connect our human spirit to the spirit in the cosmos, we begin to understand how our spirit and soul live within our body and the natural world. Our sense of community increases.

Many students entering our Foundation Program intend to become Waldorf teachers, but a growing number come to deepen their lives and pursue other vocations. The Foundation Program facilitates self-transformation. Through 28 active weeks of exploration and discovery, students become more truly ‘themselves.’ They re-orient their lives with new spititual insights, find new directions and form new friendships. Students often say, “I feel like I’ve finally come back home.” Those who complete the Foundation Program follow their calling into various professions.

“Foundation studies” are offered at many centers around the world, but usually as part-time classes embedded within Waldorf Teacher Education programs. Rudolf Steiner College offers one of the few full-time foundation programs available anywhere in the world. A full-time program can provide more intensive experiences of transformation than part-time offerings. Classes are well-integrated through the day, week, and year. Students are amazed to find how quickly they change and find their true nature and vocational interests. It is quite beautiful to witness their transformations.

RSC is blessed with a beautiful 13-acre campus in Fair Oaks, California, a short walk from the Sacramento Waldorf School and the American River Parkway and bike path. The campus feels like an oasis for the soul and spirit, with lovely classrooms and lecture halls, spaces for eurythmy and assembly, a large biodynamic garden and kitchen, a flowform pond, a grand tent for gymnastics, spacious dormitories and common rooms, a library with computers and internet access, and a well-stocked bookstore. The Sacramento Faust Branch holds weekly meetings and lectures on campus, and evening and weekend workshops and conferences enrich the cultural life throughout the year. Raphael Therapy Center and the Christian Community provide wonderful support to our active anthroposophical community, which includes very talented artists, teachers, therapists, counselors, and biodynamic gardeners. A growing number of young people are enrolling in the program.

bh: Just how are you changing your program?

BG: The Foundation Program at Rudolf Steiner College began in 1976 with a focus on Carl Stegmann’s work, The Other America. René Querido, who began to direct the college and its programs in 1977, broadened the focus of the Foundation Year in two directions: a) toward a cosmopolitan esotericism, and b) toward preparing successful Waldorf teachers. I entered the foundation year as a student in 1979 and never left RSC, and the program continues to evolve.

René Querido contributed this enduring vision for the Foundation Year Program (paraphrased here):

You pass through an arched portal and enter into a large central hall with lofty ceilings, banners flying, and sunlight streaming in from above. Clusters of people doing all sorts of interesting things are spread throughout the hall, dancing, playing music, singing, painting, sculpting, performing plays, reciting poetry, telling stories, lecturing, having lively conversations and study groups, asking questions, sharing biographies. People are working in the biodynamic garden, doing gymnastics, meditating, taking walks by the river, doing phenomenological observations of nature, exploring the stars. A joyful and expectant mood prevails. Opening off this large festive central hall are portals leading into adjacent grand halls, each devoted to deeper activity and research in the realms of anthroposophy, Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, the visual and performing arts, social sciences, medicine and therapy.

René’s vison has inspired my teaching in the Foundation Program for the past 30 years, and for the twelve of those years that I’ve served as its director. There has always been a “creative tension” in trying to serve the needs of first, those who want living experiences of anthroposophy and its incredible gifts to humanity, and second, those who want to become Waldorf teachers. This coming year, 2011-2012, we are clearing pathways for both groups to be fully served within the same program. The fall semester of the Foundation Program is “Foundations in Anthroposophy.” It offers comprehensive explorations of many aspects within the anthroposophical world view, including the basic books, Rudolf Steiner’s life and work, Parzival, biography and life cycles, inner work and phenomenology, and the arts.

In the second semester, students may enter the track “Deepening Anthroposophy,” which allows greater depth and research into the esoteric core of anthroposophy and its application within many fields. Or students may enter the “Waldorf Teacher Preparation” track and focus on child development, Waldorf curriculm and arts, and skill building needed to become a Waldorf teacher. This track will also have anthroposophical depth, but directed toward teaching children.

This separation into two tracks in second semester is a new departure for anthroposophical adult education in the West. I am very excited to be offering deeper coursework and research opportunities in anthroposophy. For 30 years, I’ve been wanting to share ‘advanced anthroposophy’ with those who love this work as much as I do. And my Waldorf teaching colleagues are thrilled that those students who want to be Waldorf teachers will gain an additional semester to prepare themselves properly. Both tracks in the second semester will offer extensive coursework in the arts, which are key to personal transformation.

We are also compressing each semester into fourteen weeks of classes held three and one-half days per week, all day Monday-Wednesday and Thursday mornings. This will allow students to breathe, study and prepare assignments, work part-time jobs and spend time with friends and family. We offer evening elective classes in star wisdom, eurythmy, esoteric Christianity, and will hold several intensives on Thursday afternoon and Friday (and some weekend workshops) in biodynamic gardening, music history, evolution of Western consciousness, projective geometry, and many other subjects of interest. The electives and intensives are designed to meet the students’ interests and allow them to pace themselves through the year. The three and one-half day week allows us to reduce tuition and make the Foundation Program more affordable in these difficult times, without losing the advantages of richness and continuity of the full-time experience.

It will be possible for a student to contain their time in the classroom, or to expand it and explore other areas of interest. We also offer certain ‘blocks’ of classes to visitors who wish to partake in them. We welcome those who want to study The Philosophy of Freedom and other topics within the full-time program to join in for three-week intervals. Blocks in “Deepening Anthroposophy” semester will also be open to visitors who are familiar with the basic books and wish to go further.

bh: Rudolf Steiner's "basic" or fundamental books have usually been the basis of foundation studies. Are they still so important after a hundred years? Can you say briefly what insights and perspectives each of these books gives?

BG: In the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty,” a princess pricks her finger on a spindle and sleeps for 100 years, and her castle choked by an impenetrable thicket of briars. No one can enter and awaken the princess until 100 years have passed. Then a prince finds that the briar thicket blossoms and opens, allowing him entry to the castle where his kiss awakens the sleeping princess.

We perhaps have no idea how fortunate we are that one hundred years have passed since Rudolf Steiner wrote his “basic” books. The wisdom (Sophia) that an initiate bestows to humanity cannot be fully accessed by human beings until one hundred years have passed. Then human souls have ripened sufficiently to open up and begin to embrace her.

This experience became real for me 100 years after Rudolf Steiner published The Philosophy of Freedom (1894). We held a centenary celebration at RSC in 1994, and from that year forward the book has became more and more transparent and accessible to everyone! The Philosophy of Freedom used to have a terrible reputation for being difficult and inaccessible. Having led more than 100 groups of students through study of this pivotal book, I can attest that working through it directly awakens the reader to certainty in knowing and to the reality of freedom. Its accessibility and importance has increased for every group of students, and it is perhaps my favorite book to teach.

The Philosophy of Freedom is one of the most important books ever written, because the reader who comes to experience her/his own thinking as a spiritual activity finds the source of her or his moral intuition. Working through the book strengthens the “I” and awakens us to the Logos in all that we experience (although the word Logos never appears in its text). Rudolf Steiner considered The Philosophy of Freedom his greatest and most lasting gift to humanity. It is an essential tool of self-transformation within the Foundation Program, and it makes studying other philosophies into a joyful human artistic experience.

Rudolf Steiner was disappointed that more people have not taken up the exercises he gave in How To Know Higher Worlds. Though it is perhaps his best-selling book, comparatively few people really work it through completely and faithfully. The text artistically leads the reader through stages of the Rosicrucian path in modern terms accessible to anyone, and its wisdom and practical advice is profound and invaluable. The book becomes a wonderful companion. Reading it, you feel as if Rudolf Steiner is present by your side, offering friendly advice that applies directly to what you’re experiencing.

Theosophy is so crystal-clear that it is stunning and awakening. When studying Theosophy, you find new clarity in your thinking and begin to apply it to life’s situations. Not only are the descriptions of the nature of the human being in Chapter One illuminating, but Chapter Two (on reincarnation and karma) unfolds so logically that you could share its arguments with anyone—even your parents! After working through it, you wonder why everyone doesn’t admit and embrace the reality of reincarnation. Chapter Three describes one’s experiences of the body, soul and spirit within the sense world, the soul world and the spiritual world. This chapter richly rewards the reader by so profoundly articulating the different regions of our experience. Chapter Four describes the path of knowledge, like a condensed and transformed version of How To Know Higher Worlds. Theosophy is more relevant than ever before, in part because its logical clarity is so stimulating and its descriptions so scientifically transparent. It is a joy to read and re-read.

Esoteric Science: An Outline compares ‘spiritual science’ to ‘natural science.’ Although it is lengthier than than the other three ‘basic books,’ the warm tone of the opening chapters of Esoteric Science may be more appealing to some readers than Theosophy. Descriptions are given of spiritual research, the nature of the human being, our experiences in sleep and death, and yet another variation of How to Know Higher Worlds is given in Chapter Five.

Chapter Four is similar to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Reading through its descriptions of cosmic and human evolution the first time can be overwhelming, but repeated readings deepen familiarity and understanding of our relationship with our solar system and the spiritual hierachies. (René Querido quipped, “One should never have to listen to a symphony the first time. It’s always better the second and third time.”) Symphonic descriptions of the earlier and present stages of human and Earth evolution in Chapter Four are extended into the immediate and distant future in Chapter Six. It is particularly comforting (and chastening) to realize that we human beings owe our very existence to the creative work of the spiritual hierarchies, and to the sacrifices made by the kingdoms of nature. We recognize the true value of the Earth for human evolution, and the need to take care of our Mother.

In my experience, the ‘basic books’ are more important (and more accessible) now than they were 100 years ago, when Rudolf Steiner penned them. He wrote them for us, to meet the needs of the 21st century.

bh: What else is involved in the studies? How do you expect your students to use what they have learned in the foundation studies?

BG: Five recognizable attributes radiate through anthroposophy. Exploring and pursuing these five attributes with artistic balance and intention can set the stage for a healthy Foundation Program, and the application of what is learned grows out of the student’s interests, intentions and capacities.

First, anthroposophy has a master teacher in Rudolf Steiner. Many spiritual movements have gifted or charismatic leaders, but Rudolf Steiner’s ability to guide us in forming clear insights is unexcelled. Study (in the Rosicrucian sense) opens us to his remarkable insights and achievements. Rudolf Steiner never wants adulation; he would like us to light our own fire of initiative and become strong, active individuals who love the world.

Second, he leads us along paths of inner development that help us to awaken and develop latent organs of soul and spiritual perception. As we take up our own inner work, we become pupils of these disciplines and find our way forward.

Third, Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual research brings forth living insights about the wonders of the cosmos, nature, and the human being. These wisdom-filled treasures are living works of art that help us more deeply understand the mysteries of life. Only through artistic activity can we integrate these living insights into our being; they become self-tranformative.

Fourth, a universal community of beings supports the activities of anthroposophy, striving together to help us heal the world, meet the needs of our time, strengthen our individual initiative and renew human culture. Conversation leads to communion with our brothers and sisters and with beings in the spiritual world. We begin to become human members of a greater hierarchy we can build together: Spirits of freedom and love.

Fifth, practical applications of this living human wisdom (anthroposophy) already bear fruit in many realms of human endeavor. Yet so many more areas of human life will benefit if the student of anthroposophy builds skill in areas of interest and actively practices these skills to change the world.

[See diagram above, click to enlarge.]

Few spiritual movements demonstrate all five attributes so fully as does anthroposophy. Adult education can become ‘transformative’ when all five dynamically guide its shaping. This is our guiding star for the Foundation Program at Rudolf Steiner College.

bh: Thank you!

~~~

[See link and attachment for more information on this program.]