Bringing Spiritual Ideas into Matter
Warren Lee Cohen, MEd, BA Physics, is the Co-Executive Director and Director of Teacher Education at the Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto. Join him this summer in his sculpting workshop "The Human Form Divine" July 22 to 26 at the RSCT Summer Festival of Arts and Education.
During my annual visits to Brazil, I have noticed that Brazilians (“Cariocas” in particular – people from Rio de Janeiro) are looking for practical ways to approach an understanding of the spirit that will make a difference in their busy lives. The forces of materialism are powerful in Rio. Chaos is abundant, poverty and senseless violence all too common. The daily struggle for survival can be exhausting, leaving little time or energy to pursue other interests. Yet, the people there want to reconnect with their ideals, to bring meaning to their lives for inspiration and fortification. For these reasons, I was asked to lead a workshop, at the newly forming Waldorf Teachers’ Seminar, on the three-fold nature of the human being. I decided to work not only with the head, heart and hands; thinking, feeling and willing; body, soul and spirit … but also with the three-fold nature of the spiritual guidance available to us.
The College Imagination
Rudolf Steiner had less than three weeks to prepare the first twelve Waldorf teachers, who were dedicated to incorporating a living, spirit-filled view of the human being into their teaching. Steiner knew that the teachers’ continuing development as whole, interested and open-minded human beings was central to the healthy functioning of the school and to the education they hoped to bring to the children. Therefore, from the beginning, he urged them to develop capacities within themselves to learn how to ask for and receive spiritual guidance and assistance in their work, and he warned them that were it not for this spiritual help, they would likely find the task of founding the school overwhelming and be tempted to give up. On the first day of training, he offered this imaginative picture, now often called the College Imagination, of how beings of the spiritual world support our daily work, even if this collaboration is often unseen and unacknowledged by us.
“Behind each of us stands our Angel gently laying hands upon our head. This Angel gives each of you the strength you need. Above your heads hovers a ring of Archangels. They convey from one to the other of you what each of you has to give to the other. They connect your souls. Thus you receive the courage you require. (From this courage, the Archangels form a vessel.) The Light of Wisdom is given to us by the Higher Beings of the Archai, who do not form themselves into a ring, but come from the beginning of time, reveal themselves and disappear into primordial distances. They project into this space only as a drop. (A drop of Time Light falls into the vessel of courage from the active Time Spirit.) “
(noted down by Caroline von Heydebrand):
This was summed up by Walter Johannes Stein:
“Strength – Angel
Courage – Archangel
Light – Archai “
Angels
Behind each one of us stands an Angel, our Guardian Angel. Like our mothers (ideally), it envelops each one of us in unconditional love. It prepares us to meet the challenges that are coming. Everyone has such a dedicated spiritual guide. They give us the safe space in which our higher selves can develop and eventually come into independent maturity. Angel light allows true imaginations to stream into our consciousness. These guide us in our earthly tasks and relationships and give us strength to overcome the inevitable challenges we all meet along the way. Eventually, in the very distant future after a number of incarnations, we will take over this responsibility from the Angels, just as we gradually find our independence from our parents. Until then, the Angels’ unconditional love remains steadfast, guiding us along our way and giving us the strength of which we are in need.
Archangels
Archangels unite groups of people, who have a common purpose or mission, by flowing in rhythmic motion amongst group members and their angels. They weave together mutual intentions and striving to help us form a sense of group identity, be it a community, family or nation. While angels give to each individual member the strength she needs, Archangels inspire and give courage to each member of the group to work together to fulfill their common tasks. Whether forming a school, a team, a theatre play or a political movement, the work of the Archangels helps form the group into a dynamic and viable whole. This group may well become able to receive higher spiritual intentions in order to meet challenges particular to its historical setting and time.
Archai
Archai, sometimes called Time Spirits, shine the light of intuition into the dynamic relationships or vessels that have been built with the aid of the Archangels. These exalted beings appear only in the form of a drop of light, which they offer to help us to meet the ever changing needs of humanity. The Archai help us attune our efforts to be most fruitful at this time and place. You can see the results of their work in the rise and fall of various peoples and impulses over the course of human history.
Individual strength from imaginations, courage and inspirations to work with one another and the intuitions to help us meet the essential challenges of our times: these are the gifts of the Angels, Archangels and Archai. As we work together as teachers or in any community for that matter, it is helpful to recognize the presence of these exalted beings that are ever ready to support our common work. Without their help, much that we set out to do would be too difficult, painful or disheartening to carry through to completion, or too misguided to be beneficial. With their help, true social innovation is possible. They support the creation of social initiatives that benefit individual societies and the continuing development of humankind.
Clay Modeling and the Imagination
Rudlof Steiner did not hope that the teachers would mindlessly recite the College Imagination or that they would believe in it as a doctrine. He wanted them to penetrate between these words to form a living understanding of the dynamics of how these spiritual beings work together with human beings to support their daily work, relationships and collaborations. He wanted the teachers to keep these ideas in the front of their minds so that these spiritual beings could give their optimal benefits to the first Free Waldorf School.
Attempting to better understand and make connections with these ideas, we set out to model this verse in clay. First we spoke and contemplated the imagination in both English and Portuguese, allowing plenty of time for the images to build up our imaginations. We then set the text aside and brought out large bags of ceramic clay. Sometimes hands can reveal ideas and relationships that do not easily arise to full consciousness in our thinking alone. A more tangential approach can free us to become aware of deeper insights and meanings that seem to emerge when we least expect them
Each of us began by forming a large lump of clay into a sphere. We worked in the air with only our hands trying to make this sphere as round and homogenous as possible. Our hands appeared to intuitively know the shape of a sphere and to need little input from our other senses. In fact, even when we paused to reflect on our activity, our hands seemed to carry on forming the spheres on their own accord. Through this process we discovered the three-fold nature of the hand: the powerful base or heal of the hand that easily moves large amounts of clay, the sensitive and rarely touched inner palm and the dextrous and clever finger tips. We worked in silence (not easy for such social people) so that we could be attentive with all of our consciousness to the unfolding creative process. After 15 minutes we passed our spheres to other people and compared the remarkably different qualities they embodied, including their shape, density, smoothness and warmth. We had all crafted spheres, and yet each one reflected unique qualities of its creator.
I encouraged each person to imagine that she was working as the Guardian Angel of her clay sphere, helping it to approach its true form, its ultimate perfection, in much the same way as our Guardian Angels work with us, giving us strength and guidance. We held this imagination while working (and then again in quiet contemplation before moving on to the next step of our creative process).
We then gathered into groups of five participants. Each set her sphere next to four others forming a circle or ring of spheres. I invited participants to envision the dynamic activity of the Archangels as they flow from one being (sphere and sculptor) to another. We then worked with 10 hands per group gently moving and moulding the clay together in these now larger collaborative sculptures. Each person was given permission to make changes to any part of the sculpture and equally encouraged to accept the changes that others made. No part of it remained identified with an individual. It became a group collaboration. Gradually, the spheres merged into a form that then began to take on some of the qualities of a vessel with an inside and an outside. The participants regularly moved around their emerging sculpture. This helped them to perceive it in its full dimensionality, to contribute to all perspectives and to accept responsibility for the whole sculpture and not just one part of it.
After working in groups for some time, I then invited each group to make their vessel ready to receive a drop of light from a yet more mysterious spiritual source, the realm of the Archai. This process is akin to making a home ready to receive a new baby. Questions of sensitivity and robustness emerged. Was the vessel ready? Would it be strong enough to hold this drop of light? How would the vessel be altered by receiving the light? The groups worked to simplify, strengthen and focus their vessels so that they could best receive this gift, which in this context would be a small ball of clay.
The groups worked with concentration and focus to prepare their vessels. Some sculpting groups invited a golf ball size ball of clay into their vessel. Others only wanted the tiniest drop, and others wanted a few drops in a number of special spots. These drops transformed the vessels completely. They gave the vessels a sense of purpose, a mission to fulfill, and a responsibility. Participants expressed that had there been more time, they would have wanted to allow their vessels an opportunity to respond to the unique impulse that each drop brought to their vessel.
Collaborative sculpturing requires a lot of giving and receiving, acceptance, rejection and coping with change that is and clearly feels beyond one’s direct control. Yet, the participants were remarkably full of energy, enthusiasm and grace. They expressed that this process, while challenging, had helped them to step closer to the mysterious workings of Angels, Archangels and Archai. They were grateful for the mutual support and inspiration that came from working collaboratively and said that this far outweighed the challenge of having to let go of their individual impulses. This exercise helped them to imagine the subtle ways in which these spiritual beings’ support for human endeavours might manifest in their own work and lives. The participants were active in body, soul and spirit. They used their imaginations and will to penetrate into the mystery of communal creation. The dynamic quality of this exercise cultivated a living quality of thinking and feeling that enabled them to sense and consciously work with the spiritual world.
References
Steiner, Rudolf Foundations of Human Experience, SteinerBooks, 1996
Photographs courtesy of Isabel Santos
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