Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Rudolf Steiner tells us that Emerson permeated his thoughts with hisown activity to such a degree that in them was no trace of the negative forceof “double” that also haunts the minds of our Western world. Emerson’sthoughts have the clear, cold purity of glacial ice that can catch and magnifybeams of sunlight to dazzling brilliance. Just so his words can create shaftsof insight that strike fire in the human heart.Henry David ThoreauThoreau, Emerson’s friend and counterpart, viewed the universefrom one small plot of countryside in Concord, Massachusetts, where he livedhis entire life, yet through his Civil Disobedience his influence rayed out toTolstoi and Gandhi, and down the halls of time to Martin Luther King, evento the great nonviolent protests in Eastern Europe. His townsmen, however,paid him small heed, and his words proclaiming nonviolent disobedienceto the State were not even published till quite a while after his death.His language can be like a New England brook through the bubblingwaters of which we discern the forms of nature’s most secret and powerfulwisdom and man’s awakening aspirations. His work was in the spiritlaboratory of Nature. His book, Walden, is filled with such wisdom as thefollowing:There is nothing inorganic. … The earth is not a mere fragment ofdead history like the leaves of a book … but living poetry like theleaves of a tree which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth,but a living earth … the Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. …The coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaosand the realization of the Golden Age.Or we find such passages as the following:Morning is when I awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reformis the effort to throw off sleep. … The millions are awake enough forphysical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effectiveintellectual exertion; only one in a hundred million to a poetic ordivine life. To be awake is to be alive. We must learn to reawaken andkeep ourselves awake, not by mechanical means, but by an infiniteexpectation of the dawn. … I know of no more encouraging fact thanthe unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a consciousendeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, orto carve a statue … but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the229