Page 3 - CfA

Week 1

After More Than a Hundred Years: Christ, Sophia,

and Anthroposophy “After Auschwitz”

With Christopher Bamford

After an extended “century of night,” of egotism usurping the true I, of

genocides, ideological wars between nations, individuals, corporations, ethnic

and religious groups, of fear, torture, and a general denial of the holiness of

human, animal, and plant life, perhaps it is time to return to the roots, to seek

the essence, of anthroposophy “after Auschwitz.”

“After Auschwitz” means that we must change utterly, we must learn to think,

feel, act, and speak otherwise—selflessly, without egotism, abjuring power.

It means overcoming the tendencies that feed these, such as fear, pride,

ambition, fame, greed, vengeance, calculation, manipulation, and the need to
control. It means overcoming preconceptions, pre-judgments, certainties, dead

thinking and language. It means

understanding the power that lying

and self-deception, conformity,

sectarianism, materialism,

objectification have over us.

Beginning from basics, we will

seek to recover the heart of Rudolf

Steiner’s teaching. Starting from his

insistence that we must take “three
steps in the perfecting of our moral

life for every step in meditative

knowledge,” we will explore how,

with great prescience, he sought

to lay down a transformative path

of inner resistance to the forces

threatening human and earthly

evolution. In other words, we will be
seeking the path to the recovery of our true humanity, of a truly human life.

In short, how do we become truly free and able to love, understanding these

as being two sides of a single reality? How do we find Christ, Sophia, and the

living being Anthroposophia today, “after Auschwitz?”

Eurythmy with Cezary Ciaglo

Christopher Bamford, as editor-in-chief of SteinerBooks, has introduced, edited, and

translated numerous volumes by Rudolf Steiner. He is also a respected authority on

Western esotericism, the author of two books, and an international lecturer. Two of his

essays have been recognized in Best Spiritual Writing.

Center for Anthroposophy — Renewal Courses 2014 1