Online Zoom Forum: Rudolf Steiner: The Spiritual Vision in his Life and Work.
Date: Wednesday 7 February 2024.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Christopher Grant:
Bio: I met the work of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy around 20 years ago.
I am a civil engineer by profession and I have also been involved with various Anthroposophical initiatives and projects over the years.
Currently I am involved with supporting a US based research and education initiative called Mystech with a UK-based project called “Facing the Future”.
Mystech have taken up Rudolf Steiner’s insights about technology and are showing us how practical Anthroposophy can help us better understand and develop a healthy relationship with it.
Speakers:
Dr James Dyson:
Title: Rudolf Steiner – The Spiritual Vision in his Life and Work.
Description: Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was born with a remarkable degree of natural clairvoyance. Throughout his later childhood and adolescence, his inner challenge became to build a bridge between the world he experienced supersensibly and that of ordinary physical sense perception. His quest led him through university studies in mathematics, natural science, philosophy, epistemology and cognitive science. While editing the centenary edition of Goethe’s scientific writings, he was to recognise in Goethe’s approach a fully conscious path to building this very bridge. His hope was that the prevailing materialistic reductionism of the nineteenth century could be transcended in this way, creating a natural and spiritual science that transcended the split between Baconian and Kantian subjectivity and objectivity. His foundational writings, published between 1880 and 1900, (i.a.“Goethe’s World View” and “Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path”) were aimed at clarifying and elaborating this cognitive methodology.
Academia didn’t take up his work, no university chairs being offered to him despite the fact that he was highly placed and visible in the academic culture of his time. Subsequently, his life led him to the Theosophical Society, where for the first time he found an audience interested in hearing his spiritual insights. Two of his four main books during the following ten year period were “An Outline of Esoteric Science” and “How to know Higher Worlds”. In 1910 his outward direction modified, and he turned away from the Theosophical Society, eventually establishing an independent School of Spiritual Science, with the aim of cultivating insights into how spiritual perception could be translated into practical life and work, especially within education, medicine and agriculture. He named his path of spiritual cognition Anthroposophy, meaning a Path of Insight into connecting Human Consciousness with the Consciousness of the Spiritual Beings out of whose activity the whole universe, including human beings, has emerged. For Steiner, there was no ultimate distinction between consciousness and matter, but inner development was needed if this hypostasis was to translate into lived experience.
Dr Iddo Oberski:
Title: Human Soul, Know Yourself!
Description: I will attempt to give a flavour of one path for spiritual development that Rudolf Steiner developed and share aspects of my own experiences with some of Steiner's writings.
Bio: I am currently a trustee for the Edinburgh Group of the Anthroposophical Society and for the Garvald Trust. Before I retired on health grounds, I worked as a Senior Lecturer in Learning and Teaching at Queen Margaret University and have published articles on a wide range of educational topics, including Steiner-Waldorf education.
Bridget Beagan:
Title: Living with Anthroposophy.
Description: Steiner’s insights into the spiritual world are a wellspring of knowledge which can become a guide for our practical life on earth and our own inner development. Biodynamics involves the human being working to integrate the earth and matter with the human being and cosmos. This can become a path of development.
Bio: I moved to Edinburgh as a child and have lived in the area more or less all my life. I attended the Edinburgh Steiner School and studied Social Pedagogy at Aberdeen University. I have five adult children .For the past twenty five years I have had the privilege to live and work at Garvald Home Farm. Garvald Home Farm is a small community which supports adults with additional needs to participate in the running of the two hundred acre biodynamic farm. I feel that I have been able to hold anthroposophy at the heart of my life and work.
Emily Maclean:
Title: Rudolf Steiner and the Arts: Engaging the Spirit.
Themes:
• The arts as related to the human spirit
• The art of Creative Speech
• Finding balance through artistic practice
• Unlocking the qualities of consonants and vowels
Bio: Emily Maclean (MA, MEd) trained as a Steiner/Waldorf teacher, speech artist and therapeutic speech practitioner. She has engaged with Steiner’s philosophy professionally in the UK and the USA for over 30 years in these areas and continues to contribute to international teacher education courses as well as working as a private practitioner. “I see the thread of my life as being a search for how the human spirit lives in language and communication and in its truest sense, brings community.”
Nick Brett:
Title: Child Development and the Wisdom of the Steiner Waldorf Curriculum.
Description: This talk will explore child development and something of what lies behind the teacher and the wisdom of the Steiner Waldorf Curriculum.
Bio: I was, once upon a time, the farmer at Garvald Home Farm, a Bio Dynamic farm south of Edinburgh. I keep strong ties with the land by continuing my link with Garvald Home Farm.
I transitioned from farming to teaching about 25 years ago. At Edinburgh Steiner School I have been a class teacher for many years and moved up through the school. I have really enjoyed the cross curricular approach and being able to teach many disciplines from metal work to drama , running choirs to physics and chemistry in the middle school. During my time at the school I have served as part of the management team and recently been given the task of Interim Head of School.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Cost: By Donation:
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
There seems to be a new issue with Paypal and hopefully it will be resolved.
If you are having a difficulty paying by Paypal, then you can pay by bank transfer instead.
NB: you must also email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so we can send you the Zoom sign-in details.
Here are the bank transfer details:
Account Name: Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace
Bank Address: Edinburgh Royal Mile Branch
Account Number: 06131159
Sort Code: 802000
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The IBAN number is as follows:
GB70 BOFS 8020 0006 1311 59