Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

Transcendentalists, we have many examples of creating a conscious relationship
with the natural world.
Many students believe that the earth would be healed if humans
were scraped off it. Some feel that it’s time for humans too to die out because
they’re causing such damage to the earth. What hurts is that there is
no acknowledgement of a process and consciousness at work in the universe.
This is a strong feeling among the young. In studying the Old Testament,
they read the story of the prodigal son, who wastes what he was
given, and yet the father rejoices at his return. This is the son who has had
experience and has come home. Whitman’s words resonate: “Prodigal, you
have given me love! Therefore, I to you give love!’ (Leaves of Grass) After
students live with this story, they are less likely to want to scrape humans
off the face of the earth.
We can choose movement or we can choose materialism, but we
can come home again.
Students love the Ramayana and Gilgamesh. At first, they hate the
Old Testament because they think they know what it’s about; as teachers we
know that they don’t have a clue. Students are open to the East and closed
to the West. I give my students a picture to show the difference between
the East and the West. I ask them to imagine a waterfall and to recognize
that it is composed of drops. Eastern religions desire union with the waterfall,
a loss of individuality. We need to make our students question whether
they are really willing to give up their individuality. They can see that the
waterfall changes with each particular drop. Our task is to combine East
and West. Anthroposophy does that – it is the third choice, it is the movement
between.
Students are vitally interested in the question of Good and Evil. If
we say that “Evil is Good out of time,” does that mean that evil is good
done at the wrong time? Or is evil something good that is taken out of
time? If you’re in the stream of time, good and evil work. If you’re not in
the stream of time (maya), there is no good and evil.
These questions are most intense in the11 th grade. In Grade 10,
they have had the Old Testament. We use Stories of the Bible by Roche.
When they read the story of Adam and Eve, the first reaction is, “It’s
always the woman’s fault.” But they need to go deeper. What does Eve
want? She wants to be like a god. What’s it like in Paradise? Students
quickly come to the realization that it’s boring and static. Why would we
want to stay there forever? There is no desire, or only for food. Adam and
Eve are in an animal state. In 11 th grade, we can investigate where the picture
of heaven comes from? Paradise was perfect; is heaven like that? If you
didn’t believe in an evolution of consciousness and there was no movement,
what would you do in heaven? Is sitting around preferable to artful
activity? We don’t want to go back to paradise. There must be movement.
We don’t want what we have already lost; we don’t want to regain Paradise.
We want to move on with optimistic hopefulness that we as human beings
can participate in the creation of the evolving future.
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