Global Event College

"This creates a womb that will always be able to carry the future"

I wish to dedicate with gratitude these words of Rudolf Steiner, spoken 103 years ago to the builders of the Goetheanum, to the members of the faculty of the global event college, that allowed us in the last 10 days of July 2019 to continue to lay the foundations for the reversed cultus and the new community building. May this work continue and fulfil its mission in the coming years!

"In these difficult times, when the fate of spiritual movements can be said to depend upon an uncertain future, we need above all to maintain a lively awareness of the eternal significance of precisely the kind of work that takes place here. It is important that such work has actually been taken up, that some human hearts and souls have actually been touched by the spiritual implications of the work, and that some human eyes have actually beheld it. For this creates a womb that will always be able to carry the future, and what we are doing thus enters into the developing stream of human aspiration. We may hope that what our dear friends accomplish here in their souls will also be able to bear the most manifold fruits out there in the world. And these fruits will most certainly be beautiful for, from its inception, this work has been done in the spirit of progress and with a desire to build the future — a desire to lead our times forward".

The Global Event College (GEC) has two interrelated functions, first, to find novel ways to experience and explore the spiritual worlds, and second, to develop the Independent School of Spiritual Science. It aims humbly and honestly, as striving humans in the 21. century, to develop Rudolf Steiner’s esoteric and social impulse, envisioned in founding the general anthroposophical society in the Christmas Foundation Conference 1923-4. This striving is based on the original spiritual scientific research of Dr. Ben-Aharon, published in his books, The New Experience of the Supersensible, The Spiritual Event of the 20. Century, Spiritual Science in the 21. Century, Cognitive Yoga and others. Since the end of last century, this research made it possible to break the deadlock of the 20. century and penetrate consciously to the real supersensible worlds.

The independent school of spiritual science and the global event college thrive when they mutually fertilize each other. They become intimately intertwined when the breakthrough to the new supersensible experience and research becomes the source of a renewal for the community of the school of spiritual science. Together they make anthroposophy as a whole alive. 

The working together of these two fundamental impulses, original supersensible research as a living source of a new community, awakens naturally the passion to transform and shape in this spirit all the branches of anthroposophical knowledge and practice in all fields of cultural and social life. The striving for  new community, based on developing the new supersensible faculties of spiritual research, is the foundation of all esoteric experience, knowledge and praxis in the Global Event College. The GEC goal is to make the new supersensible experience and research and community life into source of inspiration, that will fire the creative enthusiasm of the people working with spiritual science in the sciences, philosophy, education, medicine, the arts and social life in the world. 

The living center of the GEC's work is the supersensible experience, research and applications of the Spiritual Event (the Etheric Christ Event) of our time, which is the source of all creative becoming and the ongoing development of the living stream of the time spirit, Michael. For almost a century now, since Rudolf Steiner’s death in 1925, anthroposophy was cut off from its living supersensible source. Therefore, naturally, it lagged behind and hardened on the earth. This supersensible, life giving fountain is still blocked by the heavy stone made from all our fixed habits, dogmatism and sectarianism; it is covered up by 100 years old traditions of anthroposophical knowledge and praxis. To break through these hardened, traditional sedimentations, requires readiness to start each time afresh and meet each other anew in the living present. It means to let ourselves be surprised by the unexpected event, the unknown and potential, creative future forces; and create together new ways to explore, experience and develop them. It is a continuous creative struggle, that aim to constantly liberate and spiritualize the dead forces and habits of our ordinary consciousness and cognition, learning to experience spiritual science as the most creative, open, liberating spiritual stream in our age. In this stream are found the sources of all the best contemporary ideas, discoveries and inventions in the sciences, arts and social life.  

For the Global Event College this means to dedicate all its creative enthusiasm to help the begin of Anthroposophia find its way to the human hearts and souls on the Earth in our time:

"And if you hear this resounding in your own hearts, my dear friends, then what you will establish here will be a true union of human beings on behalf of Anthroposophia, and will carry the spirit which prevails in radiant thought-light around our dodecahedral stone of love out into the world, where it may shed light and warmth on the progress of human souls and the progress of the world".

Rudolf Steiner, opening ceremonty of the Christmass Foundation Conference, 25. 12. 1924

Overview of some sources of GEC work on contemporary thinking and creativity

One of the things that we explore in our common and individual work in the collegium is how to locate, extract and utilise creative forces from contemporary thinking and creativity in the arts and philosophy. Creative Anthroposophy serves as energising and potentising force, capable of harvesting the creative forces of our age and spiritualise them further. This provides us with constant supply of living nourishment and adds to our work fresh nutrients, that grow today in many creative people on the earth. Here’s a short guide with links to a little of the published resources for people who are interested in taking part in this exciting Michaelic adventure! 

Since Yeshayahu opened this field some years ago with the Colmar lecture “Anthroposophy and contemporary philosophy in dialogue” and the book The Event in Science, History, Philosophy and Art some work has been done by others as well that begin to gain some consistency and "depth". It´s an ongoing exploration that seeks to dig into and follow the currents and branches of thinking and perception as it has been articulated in the 20th century, and to reawaken its potential in oneself as actual experience. 

Taking as point of departure the Colmar lecture, Torbjørn Eftestøl developed an in-depth study published in Norwegian of the relation between Deleuze´s thinking and the first stages of awakening to the new life of thought as presented in and through Steiner´s philosophy. A revised English version of the Deleuze study is published in the journal Cosmos and History. Scott Hicks published recently a book-length exploration of thinking, its life, death and resurrection, finding Anthroposophy through work on contemporary French philosophy (Deleuze, Levinas, Badiou, Derrida) and finding new experiential access to this thought through Anthroposophy. The warmth of enthusiasm in this work has been taken up and reflected in spiritual consciousness by Yeshayahu in this blog-post. As part of ongoing research Torbjørn is exploring Olivier Messiaen´s views and experience of music as a path to the super-sensible life (of the etheric world) here. Read it and then take Yeshayahu´s cosmic research and expansion to heart, and the perspective of music´s “directional meaning” will grow infinitely! 

The method for all of this work is given in full with the book Cognitive Yoga – a new cognitive breathing of thinking and perception in and through each other – a new cognitive yoga that Yeshayahu has developed from Rudolf Steiner´s indications. Some aspects of this process are demonstrated live in this video by Scott and Jeremy Quick. Read also this excellent review of the book by David Adams. 

The eternal source of all this work, as of all human life and creativity, is the becoming human of the spirit, the continuous incarnation and transubstantiation, of spirit to matter and matter to spirit. This Christ-Event stands at the heart of time as becoming. The modern recapitulation of this St. Paul´s meeting with the risen One was Yeshayahu´s Event of anthroposophical initiation. The central spiritual-scientific research of it and the method to do so was published in the fundamental books The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century and The New Experience of the Supersensible. There is also a condensed overview article that presents his works in the context of Anthroposophy by Torbjørn. 

More update from the work will come on this site as we progress in our common exploration. Follow Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon´s online home and his academia-page to stay posted on where the wind blows.