‘September at Centerpoint’

     

Resuming its normally busy schedule of all sorts of gatherings and events, the Anthroposophical Society of New York City offers an abundance of attractions for September. The address is 138 West 15th Street in Manhattan. Check out the bookstore too. Here are just a few of the evening offerings, from the publicity:

Wednesday, September 13 at 7 p.m.

David Taulbee Anderson presents “Anthroposophic Psychology”

This series of ten lectures will explore and elaborate on Rudolf Steiner’s lecture series “Anthroposophy, Psychosophy, and Pneumatosophy.”

Anthroposophy deals with the relation of the soul to the body and senses. Psychosophy studies the soul itself, in its own realm. Pneumatosophy is the study of the soul’s relation to the spirit.

The first two lectures will be concerned with Anthroposophy in the special meaning described here. Lectures 3-6 will be concerned with the soul or psyche itself. Lectures 7-10 will be on pneumatosophy.

1. “The Human Being and the Senses.” We will look at differences between anthropology, anthroposophy, and theosophy. At this point in Steiner’s research he enumerated ten senses that he would later expand to twelve. He did not yet include the ego sense and sense of touch, which he spread out and distributed among the senses of smell, taste, sight, and warmth.

2. “Supersensible Processes in the Human Senses.” How Manas, Buddhi, and Atman work into the ego, astral, etheric, and physical bodies. The etheric body’s relation to the inner senses: balance, movement, and life sense. The astral body’s relation to the outer senses: hearing, speech, and concept senses. Between the inner and outer senses lie the touch senses; they are related to the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls.

Subsequent lectures to follow monthly.

David Taulbee Anderson has taught drawing and painting around the world. He has an MA in art, and certificates (Waldorf education) from Emerson College and (teaching painting) from the Wagner School at the Goetheanum.

Saturday, September 23 at 7 p.m.

Eugene Schwartz presents

“Joseph Smith and Rudolf Steiner:

Prophecy and Initiation”

Building on his May presentation, Eugene Schwartz will present three further lectures this season on anthroposophy and Mormonism. Although Joseph Smith and Rudolf Steiner lived at opposite ends of the nineteenth century, their lives had some remarkable similarities, as well as glaring contrasts. We will explore the young adulthood of both men and their efforts to share their experiences of soul and spirit with others, at the chronological and geographic contexts in which Smith preached and Steiner lectured, as well as the ridicule, verbal, and even physical attacks that both endured. Most importantly, we will examine the markedly different ways in which Joseph Smith’s “revelations” and Rudolf Steiner’s “research” led them to the world of the spirit.

Future lectures:
April 7, 2018: “Jahwe and Jesus, Gabriel and Michael.”
May 19, 2018: “From the Great Lakes to the Salt Lake.”

Eugene Schwartz taught for many years at Green Meadow Waldorf School and directed the Teacher Training Program at the Sunbridge Institute. He lectures internationally on Anthroposophy and Waldorf education, and has pioneered numerous online presentations, among them the Online Conferences for Waldorf teachers and the Online Rudolf Steiner Course. His hundreds of lectures and articles may be found here.
     

‘The coming week at Anthroposophy’

     
No fewer than three lectures to take place at the Anthroposophical Society in the coming week. That’s 138 West 15th Street in Manhattan.

Tomorrow night, Eugene Schwartz will complete his four-part series titled “In the Midst of Life:
Understanding Death in Our Time.” 7 p.m. $20 admission. From the publicity:

Eugene Schwartz at his lecture
last month.

In these talks, Eugene Schwartz has been exploring Rudolf Steiner’s often surprising and sometimes counter-intuitive indications about life after death and the dead, and how they may help us face the challenges of modern life.

Lecture 4: Heaven Can Wait. The presentation of death in today’s world—literary and lowbrow alike—may give us insight into the strange and subtle ways that light from “across the threshold” is shining into the darkness of our century. We will explore some manifestations of this light as they appear in popular culture, and witness the surprising ways in which we are coming to understand death in our time.

Eugene Schwartz has been a Waldorf school teacher,
an educator of teachers, and an educational consultant for 33 years. He has given nearly 2,000 lectures on Waldorf education and Anthroposophy. His articles, podcasts, and videos are here.


On Monday, Memorial Day, at 7 p.m., 
László Böszörményi will present “A Meditative Experience: Becoming Silent Inwardly.” No admission fee, but donations are welcome. From the publicity:

When I sit in an attitude of inner silence, I expect heaven to open up and to behold Jacob’s Ladder reaching to heaven, the angels of God ascending and descending. That would happen if I were healthy. Instead, my consciousness is overwhelmed by magnified images of my egoistic everyday obsessions. Becoming inwardly silent has to be learned; opening myself to heaven, earned. In our meditation together we will learn exercises that help us to become silent. In preparation, take the following meditation from Georg Kühlewind: “What in the visible is light, in the hearable is stillness.”

László Böszörményi

László Böszörményi, a friend of Georg Kühlewind and a founder of the Kühlewind Foundation in Budapest, is head of the Institute of Information Technology and Research Group Distributed Multimedia Systems, Alpen-Adria University, Klagenfurt, Austria.



Mr. Böszörményi will return to the podium next Thursday, the 26th, to present “The Limits of Science and the Limitlessness of the Human Spirit” at 7 p.m. $20 admission.

Our science is as good as our way of knowing is. Modern science was born from the revolutionary changes in the Renaissance, following the medieval scholastic way of knowing. The new way of knowing is based in the almost perfect separation of thinking, perceiving, and feeling, which frees knowing for a science which can deal with the dead and past world in an amazingly efficient and creative way. On the other side, this science is not able to deal adequately with life and human beings. László Böszörményi will bring examples of limits of modern science and of this way of knowing. The main part of the talk then deals with extending the borders of consciousness in full wakefulness, without illusions. A new science can be based on new ways of knowing that we develop in ourselves. Such a science strives to read the signs of nature and people, not to analyze and measure them. Such a science is, in a way, science, art, and religion in one. This would bring a new revolution, gentle and self-aware—not damaging anything, but recreating everything.
     

‘Flashback Friday: Cosmos Becomes Man’

     
This might as well count for Flashback Friday, as I just realized that I haven’t written about the January 11 lecture at Anthroposophy yet, and tomorrow night is the continuation of that lecture series.

Part three of the lecture series titled “In the Midst of Life: Understanding Death in Our Time.” From the publicity:

Life Against Death

Presented by Eugene Schwartz

Saturday, April 5 at 7 p.m.

Anthroposophy Society

138 West 15th Street

Manhattan

Eugene Schwartz explores Rudolf Steiner’s often surprising and sometimes counterintuitive indications about life after death and the Dead, and how they may help us face the challenges of modern life.

In this lecture: As the proportion of elders grows, issues of aging and dying loom larger. Prolongation of life, even eternal life, is the expressed goal of some technocrats and biologists. The infirmities of extreme old age make grim statistics and cofound hospitals, economists, and politicians. Between Luciferic defiance and Ahrimanic fear, what is the mission of death?

$20 admission for non-members.


Anyway, back to Centerpoint on Saturday, January 11, for “Cosmos Becomes Man,” the second of the four lectures that are Eugene Schwartz’s series based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Anthroposophical Society. I missed the first lecture, and, still being unfamiliar with Steiner’s philosophy, I was in for a ride stepping into this lecture cold. The publicity described it thusly: “This lecture will focus on the ‘second half’ of our life after death, beginning with what Rudolf Steiner termed the ‘Midnight Hour’ and ending with our new birth. As we examine this lengthy descent into matter, Steiner grants us insights into such issues as heredity and individuality, love and gender, and karma and human freedom.”

Mr. Eugene Schwartz

I did take brief notes this time, but remember any errors and omissions are attributable to me, and not to Mr. Schwartz. Also, you should know that audio recordings of these talks are being made available online. The first lecture, “Man Becomes Cosmos,” from December 7, is posted, and this second discussion is too. You should listen to those rather than read this, so click here.

Our lecturer began with a quick recap of that first talk, explaining how Steiner taught how human afterlife involved a cosmology that saw a transition of a person’s entire being—the physical, the etheric, the astral, and the ego—into the universe for a period of reflection when the impacts upon others of one’s thoughts, words, and deeds were assessed. Invoking Sartre, Beckett, and Ionesco, he spoke of life in this material world as a place with no exit, a theater of the absurd. “What happens on earth, stays on earth.” But through the use of the techniques of Karma, he explained, we free ourselves from this world. It’s actually something Schwartz attributed to the Jews of antiquity, whose concept and practice of atonement marks the birth of this thinking.

Thus begins existence in the Midnight Hour, the subject of this second talk.

Our spirit, somewhat incarnate in the forms of cherubim and seraphim, are at the most important moment of every human biography—that time when we set about preparing for the eventual return to the physical world, a journey of 500 years. We pass this time giving form to the bodies of those to whom we will be harmonically connected; it is an act that ensures we become social beings, and has the added benefit of resulting in uniquely formed beings (as opposed to a race of nothing but beautiful archetypes, which would happen if everybody could choose their own looks).

This sort of ethereal matchmaking is not a totally unknown concept. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream also speaks of supernatural beings playing matchmaker, albeit with humorous results, but I digress. So, to make a not very long story short, the 500 years pass, and thus the spirit drops down to the physical world, and just happens to make a right angle as it descends the grades of the arc, depicted in this not very clear photograph I shot of the blackboard:

To hear Mr. Schwartz’s explain this himself, with the added benefit of visual aids, click here.

Lecture four is scheduled for May 24.


Anthroposophy NYC maintains a very active and full calendar of events, and I have to point out that I do not mention all—or even most—of them on the Magpie. For that, please sign up for its newsletter, which comes via e-mail monthly, and its other reminders. Click here.

On Wednesday at 7 p.m., David Anderson will continue his 10-part lecture series “Spiritual Beings and Their Work.”

And I very much look forward to April 17, when Anthroposophy NYC will host its Passover-Easter Presentation titled “The Last Supper Transformed for Our Time,” described thusly:

Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples was a Passover seder, which in Judaism celebrates the Exodus from Egypt. Jesus tells his disciples that the wine shall be His blood, and the unleavened bread His body and, to restore all humanity, the Lamb of God replaces the Pascal Lamb of the Exodus.

Today a seder based on this understanding invites a commitment to eradicate all forms of enslavement everywhere. We will celebrate this extraordinary metamorphosis with traditional symbolic items from the Passover Seder plate, and imagine what we would place on it today. Feel free to bring something with you to share in this way.

Starts at 7 p.m. No admission fee, but donations are welcome.
     

‘Cosmos Becomes Man’

     
I had been planning on checking out the open house at the Center for Symbolic Studies at New Paltz on Saturday—a program on neuroscience on the agenda—but instead I’ll stick to the city, and return to Centerpoint. You should check it out also. The second installment of the “In the Midst of Life” lecture series will be presented. (The temperature is forecast to rise to a tropical 42 degrees, so there’s no problem there.)

From the publicity:

Mr. Eugene Schwartz

Eugene Schwartz will continue his four-part lecture series “In the Midst of Life: Understanding Death in Our Time” on Saturday evening at seven o’clock. In case you missed the first lecture, here’s the overview of his whole series: Rudolf Steiner spoke frequently about the importance of understanding the role of death and the Dead, but the subject remains unpopular among American anthroposophists. Eugene explores Steiner’s often surprising and sometimes counter-intuitive indications about the nature of life after death, and suggests how much help they may provide as we face the challenges of modern life.

Lecture 2: “Cosmos Becomes Man” – This lecture will focus on the “second half” of our life after death, beginning with what Rudolf Steiner termed the “Midnight Hour” and ending with our new birth. As we examine this lengthy descent into matter, Steiner grants us insights into such issues as heredity and individuality, love and gender, and karma and human freedom.


Lecture 3, titled “Life Against Death,” is scheduled for Saturday, April 5.

In other news is this announcement:

Ryan Freeman and Paul Hertel are launching a new weekly study group Wednesdays, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. (following the St. Marks Group), “to begin humble, slow, but reverent work with the supersensible.” The first text is What is Anthroposophy?

The New York City Branch of the Anthroposophical Society is located at 138 West 15th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

     

‘Anthroposophy: In the Midst of Life’

     
A new lecture series keeping current the teachings of Rudolf Steiner will begin in just over a week at the Anthroposophical Society of New York City.

From the publicity:

Eugene Schwartz

Rudolf Steiner spoke frequently about the importance of understanding the role of death and the dead, but the subject remains unpopular among American anthroposophists. Eugene Schwartz explores Steiner’s often surprising and sometimes counter-intuitive indications about the nature of life after death, and suggests how much help they may provide as we face the challenges of modern life.

In the Midst of Life:

Understanding Death in Our Time

A lecture by Eugene Schwartz

Saturday, December 7 at 7 p.m.

Anthroposophical Society of New York City

138 West 15th Street

Manhattan

Lecture 1: Man Becomes Cosmos

We begin with an overview of times and places when Rudolf Steiner spoke about death and its aftermath. We then explore the “first half” of our experience of life after death, in which the human microcosm expands into the heavenly macrocosm and reckons with the karmic consequences of the life just lived. Eugene will draw on hundreds of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures to present a comprehensive panorama of this transformative stage of existence.

Eugene Schwartz has been a Waldorf school teacher, an educator of teachers, and an educational consultant for 33 years. He has given nearly 2000 lectures on Waldorf education and anthroposophy. His articles, podcasts, and videos are here.

Future dates: January 11, April 5, and May 17, 2014. Admission: $20 for the public, and $15 for Society members.
     

‘Harry Potter lectures’

     
You can count on the Anthroposophical Society to host all kinds of interesting programs, none of them directly involving Freemasonry, but many geared to gratify the curiosity and hunger of the Masonic mind.

So naturally I missed the one I hoped to see Saturday.

It was the first in a four-part lecture series courtesy of Eugene Schwartz, a Waldorf educator, on “Harry Potter and the Secret Brotherhoods.”

From the publicity:

Is there really anything more to be said about the Harry Potter series? The awe-inspiring sales figures of the books (almost 500 million copies) and the record-breaking grosses of the movies ($7.7 billion) are pointed to as evidence of spiritual vacuity, and the fact that they were written as children’s books supposedly defines the limits of their author’s vision. Eugene Schwartz contends that there is a great deal more to be said about Rowling’s seven volumes, especially if they are read as bold forays into the shadowy domains of the “secret brotherhoods.” Eugene will draw us into the surprisingly profound world of children’s books and movies and explore the “open secret” of contemporary spiritual visionaries.

No familiarity with any of the Harry Potter books is necessary. Let us know in advance that you are going to attend any one (or all) of the lectures and Eugene will send you plot summaries.

Lecture 1: As a backdrop to our Harry Potter explorations, we will look at some children’s classics of the 20th century: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ring trilogy, C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series, and (the anthroposophist) Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story.

Future lecture dates:

Jan. 26, 2013: Harry Potter, Volumes 1, 2, and 3;

April 6, 2013: Volumes 4, 5, and 6; and

May 11, 2013: Volume 7.

Click here to visit Anthroposophy NYC, and scroll down through the calendar. Check out the programs on Sacred Geometry, and other interesting subjects.