At the Source

At the Source

Harlan Gilbert was born in Chicago. His teaching

experience has ranged over all ages: pre-school,
The Incarnation

Harlan Gilbert
kindergarten, elementary school and high school. of the Child and the
He has a Master’s Degree in Education and has
written and lectured on education and new Development of a
developments in science and philosophy. He has
lived and worked in the United States, England, Modern Pedagogy
Scotland, Switzerland, and Hungary. He returned
to the United States in 2002 and is presently
teaching high school mathematics at a Waldorf
school in New York State.
Harlan Gilbert

AWSNA Publications

T h e A s s o c i a t i o n o f Wa l d o r f
Schools of North America
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2
 At the Source
The Incarnation of the Child
and the Development of a Modern Pedagogy

by

Harlan Gilbert

3
 Printed with support from the Waldorf Curriculum Fund

Published by:
The Association of Waldorf Schools
of North America
3911 Bannister Road
Fair Oaks, CA 95628

Title: At the Source: The Incarnation of the Child and the Development of a
Modern Pedagogy
Author: Harlan Gilbert
Editor: David Mitchell
Proofreader, copyeditor: Ann Erwin
Cover: Hallie Wootan
Cover Photographs: Larry Canner, Baltimore, MD
© 2005 by AWSNA
ISBN # 1-88836558-7

Curriculum Series
The Publications Committee of AWSNA is pleased to bring forward this
publication as part of our Curriculum Series. The thoughts and ideas repre-
sented herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent
any implied criteria set by AWSNA. It is our intention to stimulate as much
writing and thinking as possible about our curriculum, including diverse views.
Please contact us with feedback on this publication as well as requests for fu-
ture work.

David S. Mitchell
For The Publications Committee
AWSNA

4
 Table of Contents

Foreword ............................................................................................ 9

Preface ................................................................................................ 14

Introduction: An Education Based on a Spiritual Element ......... 17

Chapter I: THE HUMAN BEING .......................................................... 20

The Nature of the Human Being
The Physical Body
Life
Sentience
Individuality
Ego
Soul Development
At the Boundary of the Spiritual World
The Void of Consciousness
The Path of Spiritual Experience
The Nature of Human Development
The Factors Determining Human Development

Chapter II: DEVELOPMENT .................................................................. 39

The Archetypal Stages of Development
The Seasons of Life
The Phases of Life
The Stages (or Years) of Life
About the Descriptions of Child Development

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Chapter III: THE PREPARATION ........................................................... 57
The Descent out of the Spiritual Worlds
The Origin of the Human Being in the
Spiritual Worlds
The Guardian of the Threshold
The Decent of the Sheaths: Conception

Chapter IV: THE FIRST PHASE OF LIFE (EARLY CHILDHOOD) .................. 68

The Senses
Cultivating the Senses
Developmental Stages (I): The Physical Body
Formation
Rhythm
Differentiation
Individuation
Active Imagination
Social Integration
Completion
Remarks
Evolution of Social Experience
Outlook
The Role of the Formative Forces in Early Childhood
Nature
Human Activity
Cultivating the Earth
Nature’s Rhythms
Human Ryhthms
The Festivals
Weather
Art
Cultivating Soul Capacities
Summary

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 Metamorphic Imitation
The Environment of Early Childhood
A Note on Materials and Objects for Use in Early
Years’ Environment

Chapter V: THE SECOND PHASE OF LIFE (THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL YEARS) 106
Memory and Thinking
Developmental Stages (II): The Life Organization
Transition
Rythmic Form Development
Differentiation of Form
Individuaslized Form
Creative Form
Interactive Patterned Form
Unity of Gestalt
The Living Image, Creativity and Authority
Judgment
Creative Authority
Metamorphosis, Rythm and Habit Life
Metamorphosis
The Three-Day Rhythm
Rythmic Experience
The Habit Life

Chapter VI: THE THIRD PHASE OF LIFE (THE MIDDLE AND SECONDARY
SCHOOL YEARS) ..................................................................... 144
Sentience
The Transitional Years
The Pedagogy of the Transitional Period
A Word of Caution
Developmental Stages (III): The Sentient Organization
Conscousness in the Physical Body

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 Conscousness of the Life Organization
Conscousness of the Sentient Organization
Conscousness of Individuality
Imagination
Inspiriation
Intuition
Ideals and Soul Development
Education through Ideals
Soul and World
Specialization in the High School

Conclusion: The Higher Self of the Child .......................................... 197

Appendices .......................................................................................... 201

Nature Study and Natural Science
The Spiritual Worlds
Afterword for the Waldorf Movement

Endnotes ................................................................................................ 212

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 Foreword
The research which led to this book was stimulated by a number of
fundamental questions about Waldorf education and child development,
some of which follow:

1) If human development proceeds in seven-year cycles, then these

seven-year periods must have a meaning and origin. What causes,
and what comes to expression in a seven-year developmental pe-
riod?

2) If the successive years of the Waldorf curriculum are capable of be-

ing precisely defined in terms of an appropriate curriculum and
methodology, then stages of human development must be equally
well definable on a year by year basis. Given the seven-year devel-
opmental phases each phase of life must go through seven defin-
able stages of development, each of which corresponds approxi-
mately, at least in normal development, to one year of human life.
These seven stages must be archetypal in nature, in other words, the
physical body, the life and rhythmic organization and the organiza-
tion of consciousness (as well as the further members of the human
being) must all need to go through the same principle sequence of
development. At the same time, the expression of these archetypal
stages must be radically dependent on the level of organization be-
ing developed; otherwise, the first and eighth, second and ninth,
and so forth, years of life would show more evident parallelisms
than is apparently the case.

9
3) In anthroposophic descriptions of human development, the physi-
cal body’s development is generally considered to begin with the
child’s birth. Ontologically speaking, this is nonsense; the physical
body’s development begins at conception. Taking conception as the
true beginning of the child’s first phase of development, however,
has significant consequences for understanding the pattern of hu-
man life; the first phase of life would then end already when the
child is six years (plus three months) old; the second at thirteen years
plus, etc. In fact, these ages conform more closely to the actual change
of teeth and onset of puberty than do the ages traditionally associ-
ated with the first two phases of life. How do the phases of life (in
either of these age patterns) relate to the phases of Waldorf school-
ing: early childhood, the elementary school years, and high school?

a) If the physical body’s development begins at conception and lasts

seven years, i.e. until the child is slightly more than six years of
age, then the Waldorf pupil who begins formal schooling at seven
years of age is already almost a year into his or her second de-
velopmental period.

b) The eight-year class teacher phase clearly goes beyond the lim-
its of a single seven-year developmental phase. Even if the start
of formal education is considered to correspond with the begin-
ning of this second phase of life (the traditional Waldorf view,
here held to be untenable), this implies that eight years later,
when secondary education begins, the child is already one year
into the next phase of life. If we count the phases of life as begin-
ning with conception, however, then not only does primary edu-
cation begin one year into the second phase of life, but second-
ary education starts only after the child is already two years into
the third phase of life. In either case, the last year or two of the
class years have the exceptional status of not belonging to the
same developmental phase as the earlier years.

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The natural science curriculum sequence (grade four – animal study,
grade five – plant study, grade six – mineralogy) has attracted my atten-
tion for some time. Is there any significance to this progression through
the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms? Could it be extended mean-
ingfully in any direction? Does grade three’s curriculum and develop-
ment, for example, correspond in some way to the human or ego world?
Could grade seven’s curriculum and development be considered to de-
scend into the sub-mineral realm, e.g. into the realm of chemistry? What
happens when this is extended: what lies above the human or ego realm?
What lies below the realm of physical forces?
Out of such considerations, a seven-fold pattern of development to
1
the middle period of childhood began to unfold:

I. Kindergarten. Highest spiritual world of Intuition, where the

archetypes of the crystals (of the physical world) are found. The
world of the eternal present, preceding time, the world of the
fairy tale with archetypal characters.

II. First Grade. Spiritual world of Inspiration (breathing, rhythm),

where the archetypes of the plants (of the etheric world) are found.
Rhythmic development in time begins, the world of the fairy
tale with developmental characters.

III. Second Grade. Spiritual world of Imagination, where the arche-

types of the animals (of the astral world) are to be found. When
these archetypes descend, they reveal themselves in fables; when
the human being rises up above the ego into this bordering spir-
itual world, he or she becomes a saint.

IV. Third Grade. The world of the ego, linking spiritual and earthly
experience. The ego relates to the spiritual world through mono-
theism (Old Testament); and to the earthly world as master (care-

11
 taker) of the lower worlds (of the animals, plants and land) in
farming. The mutual relationship of individual egos expresses
itself in a cooperative division of labor (which comes to expres-
sion in building).

V. Fourth Grade. The astral world. In outer experience this corre-

sponds to the animal world, in inner experience to Norse my-
thology (the second rank of the gods). Three-fold division of
experience into thinking, feeling and willing (e.g. grammar); di-
vision of wholeness of ego experience into parts (e.g. fractions).

VI. Fifth Grade. The etheric world. In outer experience, the plant
world, in inner experience, the post-Atlantean mythologies (of
the third rank of the gods). Experience of rhythm and of the liv-
ing, creative world imbuing all things. Balance and harmony.

VII. Sixth Grade. The physical world. In outer experience, the min-
eral kingdom, in inner experience, the world of the senses and
the causal laws of the physical world. Experience is now of physi-
cally real occurrences (history instead of mythology), of the re-
ality of decay and death. Religious experience is expressed
through physical events: the origin of Christianity.

As described above, this sequence of development is particular to

the middle phase of childhood. Lying behind this particular character
can be discerned an archetypal sequence of seven developmental steps
leading from the spiritual worlds to earthly incarnation. How might
this sequence might manifest in the previous and following phases of
life: early childhood and the teenage years? A description of the devel-
opmental stages of childhood year by year from conception up to adult
maturity at about twenty years of age arises.

12
 In the course of this study, it became necessary to examine also the
incarnating child’s preparation in the spiritual worlds, which can be
seen as essential a part of the process of incarnation as are the earthly
phases of childhood.
In the end, the study has grown into an epistemological foundation
for an understanding of child development and of the past, present and
future possibilities for the development of Waldorf education. As such,
it is my hope that it will aid in a deepening of comprehension of the
incarnation processes that unfold during childhood as well as in serv-
ing as a stimulus to the deepening and renewal of the Waldorf school
movement – and of education in general.

13
 Preface
By its very nature, the full scope of human development escapes
our clear and completely conscious comprehension; too much is hap-
pening on too many levels under too many influences in too many ways.
Any description of this development, and especially a description that
does not remain purely empirical but goes on to suggest practical con-
sequences for the healthy cultivation of the developing human being,
can only approach the subject from a particular viewpoint. Such is the
case with the present work, and it strives to do justice to the viewpoint
chosen.
Though a general survey of human development is required to give
a context, the present work is devoted primarily to the period in a hu-
man being’s development when others are responsible for this develop-
ment, i.e. childhood. A wholly separate work is required to describe the
nurturing of adult development through the mutuality of the interper-
sonal or social realm, and yet another to describe the cultivation of self-
development through the inner, religious, moral or spiritual life.
This book is concerned with childhood and thus, inescapably, with
questions of upbringing and education. For the purposes of this work,
the period of childhood commences when the physical body of the child
begins its development: at the moment of conception. Childhood con-
cludes when developmentally the human being no longer need be en-
trusted to the guardianship of others. The life of every human being
evolves through remarkable developments and metamorphoses, which
begin in more outward ways as the body takes form and new abilities
are achieved, and are followed by changes and growth of a more in-
ward character as capacities of soul and strength of spirit emerge.

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 Much of this work is concerned with a description of the factors
determinant and active in each stage of development1 as well as inves-
tigations of the methodological principles and thematic content appro-
priate for each stage. In order for a deeper understanding of the rela-
tionship between child development and an educational curriculum to
be established, the phases of child development need to be articulated
with an equal level of precision and detail as is the curriculum. Simulta-
neously, each aspect of the curriculum must be understood in connec-
tion with the actual developmental stage of the child. The unity of meth-
odological approach, objective subject content and incarnational proc-
ess must be made apparent. This is the goal of the present book.
The present work is only a beginning. In this regard, it is particu-
larly important that the practical examples be considered in light of the
principles from which they are drawn; the former only make sense as a
(necessarily still imperfect) realization of the latter. The author, accord-
ingly, wholeheartedly welcomes suggestions, criticisms and any help-
ful contributions to the work begun here.
This work is grounded in the fundamental research into the nature
of the human being and into human development – especially child
development – of Rudolf Steiner. I would like to declare my debt and
thanks to the life and research of this founder of a new ‘transcendental
science,’ uniting the power of thought and philosophical integrity of
the transcendental idealists who preceded him with the practical, world-
2
oriented nature of modern science. The detailed curriculum indications
presented here build not only upon Steiner’s work but also on that of
the Waldorf School movement which has pursued his research in the
praxis. Neither in the philosophical nor in the practical sections has any-
thing been taken up here, however, which has not been independently
worked through by the author, often being extended, modified or recast
in the process.
My research has led me to differ from Steiner in approach, content
and, at times, fundamental understanding. I have no doubt that every

15
genuine researcher will respect this necessity.3 Similarly, this work can-
not be regarded as somehow ‘belonging to’ the Waldorf movement. It
was written independently of this movement, though by an author with
some experience in and around it and who cherishes the greatest hopes
for its future.
This book is written for all who have to do with children and for
the children themselves. Its reception will depend upon the ability of
each reader to engage with and to enter inwardly into its (in many re-
spects challenging) approach, not on any previous pedagogical convic-
tions or experience. Above all, the challenge it presents is to see the child
and the human being afresh, for what they truly are. May it be of value
to the readers who seek it.

Harlan Gilbert
Vác, Hungary and
Chestnut Ridge, N.Y.
March 2005

16
 Introduction

AN EDUCATION BASED ON A SPIRITUAL ELEMENT

Ever more people are awakening to the concept of the human being
as a spiritual entity, that is, as a being whose origin and reality are to be
found in realms beyond the visible and tangible world of which we are
primarily aware during our earthly life. Such an awakening can arise in
various ways.
For some people, it is stimulated through the coming of a child,
through experiences which can range from an intimation of a being wish-
ing to come to earthly incarnation to a dawning awareness of the unique-
ness of the child’s being through or after the birth itself. Such experi-
ences can be grounds to re-examine out conception of the nature of the
human being, which can lead to the perception of each and every hu-
man being as concealing an eternal essence within a mortal sheath. The
experience of an incarnating child is thus one doorway to awaken to a
consciousness of the spiritual reality of the human being.
Likewise in a very different way, an encounter with death, illness or
accident, sometimes but not necessarily accompanied by experiences of
the world beyond the threshold, can awaken such a spiritual conscious-
ness. For those who have such an encounter either directly or through
accompanying another, the awareness of mortality ceases to be an ab-
stract concept. Death begins to be a living reality linked to the destiny of
an individual human being. This destiny may be perceived to continue
after death, as the individuality that has shed its earthly sheath encoun-
ters other forms of existence than those which surround us during our
earthly life.

17
 An unusual life situation (often a crisis) or a deeply significant en-
counter with another human being can also open a door to the aware-
ness that it is possible to meet in a human individuality a spiritual be-
ing and a destiny beyond that which is perceptible to the senses. How-
ever such an awareness arises, it has the power to affect the individual’s
whole relationship to life. Education, in particular, takes on a completely
different significance when it arises out of an awareness that the child
before us is a being of body, soul and spirit, an eternal individuality that
carries with it experiences from its recent sojourn in the spiritual world.
It is a necessary striving for our time to attempt to found an educa-
tion that does justice to this conception of the child and of the human
being by drawing upon all of the levels of human existence in an inte-
grated and integrating preparation for life. Though many contributions
to aspects of this task have been made from many sides, the impulse
towards a spiritually-based education which reaches all realms of hu-
man existence has been largely carried hitherto by Steiner/Waldorf edu-
cation. This educational impulse is also uniquely comprehensive, com-
prehensive in that all aspects of the human being – head, heart and hands;
body, soul and spirit – are equally cultivated, comprehensive also in
that parents and children from all backgrounds and abilities come to the
schools and find an education which serves them.4
Furthermore, the fundamental conception of child development
upon which such a pedagogical approach can be based has its origins in
the work of Rudolf Steiner. For this reason, without implying that the
educational impulse that Steiner founded is the sole or, far less, the sole
possible carrier of such an approach to the child, or that the schools that
seek to realize this impulse achieve perfection in their attempts to serve
as such carriers, this study will draw heavily on both Steiner’s descrip-
tion of the human being and of child development and the existing work
of the schools founded on this basis.
Not every child thrives on such an education, of course. Decisive,
however, in both the acceptance of a child into such schools and their

18
success in them is not, as in most school systems, the past condition of
the child – past school reports, character, talents, religious or racial ori-
gin, financial background – but the commitment to work and develop
in the future. If the child is open to the education, then the education is
open to the child.5
Practical barriers such as lack of schools, lack of teachers and lack
of funds seem to stand in the way of such an education being realized
everywhere that it is sought at present. In reality, however, it is only a
lack of initiative which can prevent a child from having an education
which is comprehensive in the sense meant here. There are many exam-
ples of apparently intransigent social, economic or practical barriers to
a spiritually based education having been overcome through (initially)
little more than vision and will power. These range from the founding
of schools and, indeed, whole communities around these schools – e.g.
for children in the slums of Sâo Paulo (Brazil) or for families in the dis-
advantaged ‘neighborhoods’ of Johannesburg (South Africa) – to fami-
lies providing at home what their children cannot obtain at school.
Above all, a spiritually based education calls upon and calls forth
forces of initiative and capacities for inner transformation in children,
teachers, and parents alike. The real evidence of spirit at work lies in the
ongoing process of transformation and development that it stimulates
in the individual, the social fabric of family and community and in the
institution itself. To these processes of transformation and development,
and to the good spirit who guides them, this work is dedicated.

19
 Chapter I
THE HUMAN BEING

THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN BEING

For most of human history, human beings have conceived of them-
selves as including an eternal essence, or spirit; a developing subjec-
tive-personal aspect, or soul; and a transient, perishable form, or body.6
Mankind’s self-image is being successively reduced in scope, however.
First, it was narrowed to include only an inner consciousness – or psy-
che – dwelling in a living form – or body.7 It is a revealing fact of history
that at the very moment when an awakening to an individual access to
ego experience took place, the awareness of a higher realm of spiritual-
ity dropped away.8
Mankind’s self-image has been further reduced over the last few
centuries to include only a life force invigorating a physical body. It
finally reached its narrowest possible limits by being confined to the
material-physical body alone. The science of the latter half of the nine-
teenth and most of the twentieth centuries expressed the picture domi-
nant at the close of this transformation in man’s self-conception. All of
what had previously been considered to be expressions of higher levels
of man’s being – life, sentience, soul, self-consciousness (ego) and spirit
– were considered by this science to be of purely physical origin in so
far as they were acknowledged to exist at all.

The Physical Body

Contributing to this narrowing of the human self-conception were
certain experimental results of natural science, such as those enabling a
dead frog’s leg to twitch or memories to be called forth through the

20
application of an electrical impulse to the nerves or brain cells. These
results seemed to make a physical basis for consciousness and life plau-
sible and were widely regarded and popularized as the initial stages of
a future complete and systematic demonstration of the physical nature
and origin of all organic and psychological phenomena.9 This demon-
stration was never achieved, however. Both within science’s traditional
areas and as a result of various new directions of research, our increas-
ing comprehension and mastery of the physical world and its processes
have repeatedly shown that the physical body cannot be considered to
be the origin of, but only to determine the manifestations of higher levels
of being.
Science once attempted to deny the very existence of life, conscious-
ness and ego awareness. This having failed, it attempted to show that
all these are purely secondary phenomena resulting from the physical
conditions. This, too, having failed, it is slowly coming round to attempt-
ing to treat these levels of being as phenomena in their own right wor-
thy of scientific consideration.
Any description of child development is dependent upon an explicit
or implicit image or conception of the human being, in whose develop-
ment childhood forms but one stage. If we want an accurate and com-
plete picture of what is happening in this development, we must first
achieve an accurate and complete picture of the nature of the human
being. Science’s increasingly precise description of the physical body
offers a great contribution here. Are there further levels of the human
being which also need to be considered in order fully to understand
human development?

Life
There is an unfortunately still too often popularized theory that life
originally arose from a purely physical origin, e.g. from random combi-
nations of chemicals in a high-energy environment. This has become to
some more and more plausible through the results of experiments which

21
simulate such an environment as the earth is postulated to have had in
the early stages of life’s evolution. Organic compounds such as amino
acids – and even protein combinations similar to very simple genetic
material – have been produced in these experiments, thus showing that
‘blind nature’ could, in principle, achieve similar results through ran-
dom combination.
In such experiments, complex pseudo-organic molecules are arrived
at through extremely high-energy impulses, that is, from impulses origi-
nating from the outside environment. The defining element of the liv-
ing world, however, is a capacity to develop through an impulse or prin-
ciple inherent in, i.e. not external to, an organism. Life lies in the capacity
to organize material into a developing organism, not in the material
which is so organized. The chemical substances that result, however
complicated, are only the means by which life operates – or else residues
from this life.
A living organism steadily increases its complexity from an initial
state of virtual formlessness up to that of a highly sophisticated organi-
zation through processes such as those of growth, metamorphosis and
differentiation. This is contrary to the tendency of the physical world,
where disorganization (entropy) steadily increases. When the forces of
the physical world take over a material (even if this once belonged to a
living organism), the material is subject only to processes of rearrange-
ment or decay.
In addition, we find in every organism a typical rhythm of life and
manner of growth which no change or exchange of its physical sub-
stance can modify into a new and viable pattern. The buttercup may be
bred or genetically altered to have a scarlet flower, but will never be-
come a rose; a mouse may be given long ears, but will never be made
into even a miniature elephant. It has been one of the greatest achieve-
ments of modern genetic science to have discovered through the de-
tailed mapping of the genetic structure that the fundamental determi-
nation of an organism’s nature, overall form and manner of growth is
not to be found in the genes.10

22
 It is clear that life is present in the living organism in a way which in
fact forms and develops this organism, in a way which does not derive
from, but rather determines the organism’s physical structure and devel-
opment. If the organizing principle of life is not derived from the physi-
cal world, then from where is it originally drawn to imbue the physical
form? What happens when a seed germinates or when a plant dies, re-
turning its physical substance to the non-living world? Just as a plant
can only grow physically by taking up substance from its physical envi-
ronment, to which this substance then returns after its death, so must
there be an environment of life-substance (formative potential) from which
the life organization of an organism is drawn and to which it returns
after its departure from the physical form.
The mineral world is adequately defined through its physical quali-
ties. The living world demands of us a comprehension of the life-giv-
ing, formative principle imbuing the physical expression, without which
the organism’s development in time must remain inexplicable and in
apparent contravention of all physical law.

Sentience
Another realm of world evolution, the animal world, appears with
the acquisition of sentience. A flower may open its blossom to the sun,
but not because it is pleased; sadness and joy, pain and pleasure, will
and reflection do not exist in the plant or mineral realms. Entities lack-
ing the capacity for sentience cannot acquire it through anything in the
physical or living worlds. However a mineral is formed, and however
the plant grows and evolves, and however we encourage and manipu-
late these forms and this evolution, sentience can neither be found nor
awakened in the mineral or plant realms. Sentience is a level of being
that arises independently of life and physicality.
There are moments – this is especially apparent in the higher ani-
mals – when sentience seems to withdraw from the living and physical
aspects of an organism. In sleep, for example, a sentient organism’s con-

23
sciousness is seemingly in abeyance, or at least strangely inaccessible.
The capacity of the sentient nature to depart from and return to the life-
imbued physical body is further important evidence of the independ-
ent nature of the sentient organization; if the latter were merely a prod-
uct of the lower organizations, so long as these lower organizations were
present, so would sentience necessarily be.
Even during the times when sentience has seemingly withdrawn
from the organism, a creature formed by and for sentience cannot be
confused with one equipped only with life and physical form. The sen-
tient nature has formed the physical body and manner of life so essen-
tially and deeply that its influence is apparent even while it is absent. It
is the nature of sentience that it transforms the lower organizations in
which it lives, not to arise from or be determined by these.
We can identify qualities of sentience which are characteristic for
every type of animal; thus we have the wily fox, fearful rabbit, vora-
cious wolf, phlegmatic tortoise, and so forth. That these qualities are the
result of a determinate organization is shown by the fact that, despite
extensive efforts at retraining, such characteristics are only modifiable
within the range natural to the species or type, which is very slight in
comparison to the differences between species. (Thus, a rabbit brought
up as a pet may move about relatively fearlessly in its familiar grounds,
but the slightest comparison with the fox or lion reveals the narrow
limits of the changes possible in its behavior.) It has been a frequent
misconception to assume that the determining organization here is the
physical body. In fact, both the animal’s behavior and its physical form
are manifestations of the underlying sentient organization. The animal
bears a sentient organization, a life organization and a physical body,
whereby the latter two (the animal’s life and form) are given shape un-
der the influence of the sentient organization.
The sentient organization, too, must be drawn from and return to
somewhere. If this is not the world of life or physical being – in which
case the sentient organization could not leave for sleep or death, but

24
would necessarily remain bound to the lower organizations – there must
be a realm of sentience with an objective reality of its own.

Individuality
An animal must always remain within the characteristic pattern of
its species’ mode of existence, expression, and so forth. In contrast, the
human being does not hold to any species-specific lifestyle or pattern of
sentience; even the human physical form takes on a far greater range of
individual expression than the animal achieves in this realm (this is es-
pecially apparent in the countenance). In addition to the wide ranging
and highly individual characteristics of each human being, substantial
changes in the manner of expression or consciousness, lifestyle and even
physical form take place over an individual’s lifetime. These go far be-
yond what can be attributed to natural ageing processes or what origi-
nates from environmental conditions, especially when we compare them
with the corresponding changes due to age or environment in the ani-
mal realm (which in the mature animal are largely limited to the cata-
strophic changes at the end of the creature’s life). The human being pos-
sesses a unique capacity to evolve in an individually expressive man-
ner: to be self-determining, self-aware and self-creative. Not only can
this capacity for self-conscious and creative individuality be found in
no other being of the natural world, but it must also be considered to
raise man partly out of this world, to be the beginning of a ‘supernatu-
ral’ aspect of his being, that is, an aspect whereby man frees himself
from his ‘natural’ state and begins to define himself independently of
this.
Every human being has such an inherent capacity for self-defini-
tion: a capacity to individually determine his or her own physical envi-
ronment, way of life, character and development. This capacity can ap-
pear more weakly or strongly but is always distinguishable in the hu-
man biography. Just as an animal which ceases to act out of its instinc-
tive nature and begins to make individual choices is unthinkable, so it

25
is unthinkable that a human being could exist wholly upon the basis of
this instinctive or natural being, without any influence from the indi-
vidual nature.11 Of course, each of us is aware of the presence and power
of the ‘lower’ nature within us, and that the latter is rarely perfectly in
harmony with our attempts at self-definition. It is just this conscious-
ness of disharmony here, implying an ability to distinguish between
our ‘natural’ self and self-conscious ego, which makes it evident that
the latter are two independent levels of being.
The human being is equipped with self-consciousness, a sentient
organization, a life organization and a physical body, all of which in
combination define his existence. The individual ego does not arise out
of the workings of (though it is often limited in its own working by) the
lower organizations;12 rather, it gives these their characteristically hu-
man form.

Ego
The ego as an organ of self-consciousness differs in fundamental
ways from the lower three members of man’s organization. Each of the
lower organizations would of itself remain in its natural condition as a
‘given’ for the human being; each is unable to modify its nature through
its own activity and is only changed through influences outside of it-
self. In contrast, man’s capacity to rise above his or her naturally given
existence through self-conscious activity was referred to above. The ego
is given as a potential which can take on content through its own activ-
ity. Whereas the nature of the lower organizations is to be experienced
through or acted upon, the ego is by nature the active agent of experi-
ence.
The human ego begins as but does not remain a wholly empty sub-
ject of self-awareness. Ego activity transforms what it encounters in the
realms of sentience, life and the physical world into an individually ac-
quired inner content of experience. I am changed through self-conscious
experience (i.e., experience in which my ego is active) in a way which

26
passive experience does not accomplish. Through such self-conscious
experience – whether of a bird-song, a gesture, a thought, or any other
object of experience – the experience is established as a content of soul
life able to be drawn upon independently of outer stimuli. An active
experience of the world gives a stable aspect or content to the transiently
experiencing ego-individuality.
The individualizing agent of experience is the ego; the objective,
individualized inner world which results from experience is the soul.
The latter is unique to the individuality, unique not necessarily in all of
its elements but certainly in the individual ‘gestalt’ which is arrived at.
The human being’s individuality thus includes a unique subject of expe-
rience and agent of individualization, the ego, and a unique, self-
determined repository of the content of experience, the soul.13 (When
either the ego or soul is mentioned alone in casual discourse, the other
element is often implied as well, for they are respectively the active and
passive sides of a single entity, the individuality.)
At an early stage of our inner development, we still depend largely
upon and identify ourselves with the experience which arises through
the lower organizations, and has come into existence without our indi-
vidually conscious contribution or active role, whereas at a later stage
we begin to take a self-conscious and active role in and identify our-
selves more with the self-determining and self-determined part of our
being. Experience leads on the one hand to a greater content of soul – the
result of an individuality gaining experience – and on the other hand to
an identification with the inner life rather than with outer experience –
the result of an individuality developing through experience.

Soul Development
Various stages of our relationship to the content of our soul life can
be distinguished. In the first stage, content is brought into the soul life
naively, ‘as found’; impressions from the outer world received are ac-
cepted in consciousness directly as they were experienced by the bodily

27
organizations. An inner image of the outer world is achieved here. We
may refer to this, the soul’s initial phase of sentience as the condition of
sentient soul.
In the second stage, the soul content achieved in the first stage is
reflected upon and the previously unstructured experiences are brought
into interrelationship. In the very act of bringing form to experience,
however, the ego actually creates a new soul content, that of the interre-
lationships established and the form given. This content, the result of a
structuring of experience by the active ego according to laws not di-
rectly given in the perceptions themselves, is further removed from the
original perceptions and has a correspondingly more formal-abstract,
less sensory-sentient nature. In other words, the content of the original
perceptions is less important at this level of experience, while the for-
mal qualities that can be discovered in and the interrelations that can be
established between perceptions (the spheres of art and philosophy, for
example) come to the fore. We may refer to this stage when the soul
grasps its experience more formally and simultaneously more inwardly
as the stage of the rational or artistic soul.
In a next and final stage of our relationship to soul experience, the
kinds of formal possibilities and interrelationships discovered or devel-
oped in the previous stage become of interest independently of the ac-
tual content of experience from which they were derived or to which
they are applied. Previously, such ordering principles were drawn upon
in order to bring form to our soul experience. They now become objects
of consciousness in their own right. In reflecting upon these principles,
we begin to comprehend the inner laws and nature of our perceptions of
the physical, life and sentient worlds. Form and relation as principles
wholly independent of the content to which they are applied14 are thus
made into new objects of experience.
By its very nature, this new content is initially largely or wholly
abstract in character, for all that originated through actual experience in
the worlds of sentience, life and physical experience has been succes-

28
sively eliminated from it, leaving purely formal qualities. By virtue of
this very abstraction, however, the understanding so gained has the
possibility of becoming independent of the individual organization of
perception and thus objective in nature.15 We may refer to this, the stage
when the soul is becoming more conscious of the principles underlying
its experience, as the stage of the consciousness soul.

At the Boundary of the Spiritual World

In the stages of soul development described above, the content of
inner experience is progressively refined. Beginning with experience
derived directly from impressions of the outer world, an ordering of
and reflection on such impressions takes place, followed by a consid-
eration of the principles of both this ordering itself and of human expe-
rience.
When we begin to reflect upon this process, some aspects of it re-
main mysterious. First of all, the sense impressions which give rise to
naïve experience have their origin in an objective outer world, but what
is the origin of the principles which we apply in order to gather to-
gether and order these impressions? Such principles are not disclosed
through the original perceptions. Nor can they be inherent in a soul life
whose initial content is given by these experiences themselves and to
which we first give form through these principles. They cannot derive
from an ego whose nature is pure activity and which in itself (i.e., inde-
pendently of that upon which it acts) has neither intrinsic form nor con-
tent. The first mystery is thus this: from where do we receive the im-
pulse and principles through which we organize experience?
Secondly, certain impressions or impulses that arise in the soul refer
to contents which are completely independent of outer experience. These
impressions or impulses nevertheless bear within themselves the po-
tential to act as meaningful and transformative agents in our inner life
and, through this, in the outer world as well. Such contents include moral
principles and spiritual ideals: honesty, uprightness, love, freedom, and

29
so forth. Such principles and ideals, like the principles by which we
order experience, are neither disclosed through our outer experience,
nor can they be explained as inherent in a soul life that is based on this
experience, nor is it evident how a content-less ego activity could gen-
erate concrete ideals. The second mystery is thus: what is the origin of
ideals and moral principles?
It is apparent that in both of these cases we become conscious of
elements of experience through our soul life which are not of this soul
life. A third, important experience indicative of a realm beyond a soul
life based on outer experience requires a separate treatment of its own.

The Void of Consciousness

Let us recall once more how our relationship to inner experience
develops. The starting point of soul experience is an inner, necessarily
subjective experience of the outer world. Experience can gradually be
purified of its subjective elements and thus become more objective in
nature, becoming thereby correspondingly more abstract in character.
The ultimate result of the abstraction of all subjective elements from the
inner life of the soul is necessarily an objectivity absolutely empty of all
content other than formal principles. At the very moment when inner
experience becomes completely objective through being purified from
all subjective elements deriving from our lower organizations, we are
thus left with a consciousness empty of all but abstract principles. These
abstract principles only apply to the content already eliminated as sub-
jective, however. If we fail to recognize (or refuse to admit) that they
stem from an objective realm of their own, we are left with no content
reflective of an objective reality. On the path towards achieving an ob-
jectivity of inner life, we are left with an empty consciousness.
Is this void of consciousness the ultimate limit of our experience, or
can we find our way past this empty condition – not back to the subjec-
tive content deriving from our lower organizations but on to achieve a
new and objective content of consciousness? If not from the bodily or-

30
ganization or the inner life of soul, from where can such an objective
content be drawn?
Here we have reached the ‘Cape Horn’ of the exploration of man’s
inner life. The systematic inner training of soul life demanded by the
development of a scientific consciousness over the last half-millennium
has required increasing objectivity and thus a continual abstraction from
the subjective richness of experience. Those who have taken this fur-
thest have again and again arrived at the awareness that they reach ex-
actly the null-point or void described above, where there is neither con-
tent nor direction left. This has sometimes resulted in extreme reactions:
either the ultimate emptiness of existence is raised to a creed and even
applied to areas of life where it is not normally experienced (nihilism),
or else the fear of objectivity and abstraction as annihilating forces which
threaten our sense of or relation to the fullness of the world leads to the
rejection of the scientific approach to experience (the ‘back to nature’
movement).
Both of these reactions are not only understandable but even have a
certain validity in the face of the serious consequences for our inner life
of an encounter with this absolute void in consciousness. In the end,
however, both reactions lose sight of the reality that this void is but a
single moment – the last arrived at position – in a long path of con-
sciousness’ development, both for mankind as a whole and on the path
of each individual who arrives at this condition. Only folly or vanity
can believe that, because a developmental step is the last one accom-
plished, it is the last one possible or the ultimate accomplishment in
human development. Only fear or false egotism shrinks from letting go
of what was attained in the past in order to turn to the requirements of
our future development.
However much any developmental stage is considered at the time
of its appearance to be an ultimate peak of evolution, in hindsight it is
seen as simply one stage in an ongoing process, equipped with both
predecessors and successors like all the stages before it. So it is with the

31
meeting with the void of consciousness. This experience must neither
be deified nor demonized, but simply faced and accepted in its real worth
as an accomplishment in the development of consciousness, an experi-
ence difficult of achievement and fleeting in character.
Every human being who faces this condition inwardly, neither flee-
ing it nor becoming lost in it, will find that a new direction to conscious-
ness opens up thereby. Through meeting this moment with courage and
honesty, an awareness arises of that which has been built up through
the process of inner abstraction or purification from all that is subjective
in soul life: new powers of soul, the control of consciousness developed
thereby and a capacity to overcome the inner passivity of experience
which is almost an illness of our times. Above all, that which remains
accessible to our consciousness even in this very void is the activity of
this very consciousness itself. Consciousness, or the ego, becomes self-
aware through discarding all experience that can distract it from itself.
When all of its content is lost, it can finally attend to its own nature.

The Path to Spiritual Experience

We recall that all activity of the subject of consciousness, the ego,
transforms experience into soul content as an objectification of this ac-
tivity. When the ego ceases raising contents of human experience which
have been mediated by the lower members16 of the human being into
inner awareness and begins to attend to its own activity, this activity
begins simultaneously to the creator of and the subject of conscious-
ness. The faculty of transforming experience into soul content, a faculty
of creative inwardness, is itself taken as the content of experience when
the source of consciousness becomes aware of its own activity.
In this condition of consciousness, no organs which would bring a
subjective character into perception are interposed between the ego and
its object of experience, for the latter is none other than the ego itself.
The ego’s self-experience is thus objective in character. This objectivity
is not achieved indirectly, i.e. through abstracting experiential (and thus

32
subjective) elements from soul life, but through the innately objective
character of the ego’s self-reflective experience. The content of soul ex-
perience which thus arises is therefore not abstract in character. This
content is an objectification of the ego’s own activity.
The ego has hitherto taken that which was mediated by the body or
that which is experienced in the soul as the object of its consciousness.
Aware all along of that which exists in the worlds of form and inner
experience, now it becomes aware of that which exists in another realm.
This is the world of creative activity, and the ego’s awareness of this
world begins with the awareness of its own creative activity.17
Creative activity is spiritual activity. Through its own self-reflective
consciousness, the ego can achieve an awareness that, though it is active
in the soul life, it is itself essentially of a spiritual origin and nature.
Engaged all along in spiritual-creative activity, now it becomes aware
that it does so and that its essential nature is this spiritual-creative activ-
ity.
Through the ego practicing consciousness of its own, essentially
spiritual activity, that is, the activity of consciousness itself, a new per-
ceptive capacity is developed. Perceptions begin to awaken for human
consciousness which have their origin neither within this conscious-
ness nor in the soul or lower organizations. The ego that is able to expe-
rience its own activity also begins to experience a spiritual world whose
origin lies outside its own activity. It becomes aware that, just as our
physical body is surrounded by a physical world which exists inde-
pendently of whether we use our sense organs to perceive it or not, so is
our ego surrounded by a spiritual world which exists independently of
our perception of it.
This recognition only appears strange or impossible when the stage
of self-awareness has not yet been achieved. Once we begin to experi-
ence our own consciousness in its spiritual-creative nature, the aware-
ness of a spiritual-creative world accessible to inner perception has al-
ready been established, and the expansion of this awareness is in many
ways less of a step than its foundation.

33
 It should be said that the initial impressions of such an objective,
spiritual-creative world are subtle and slight. The ego’s initial capacity
for attention in self-awareness will be found to be minimal; no greater is
its capacity for attention to the phenomena of this world outside of it-
self.
Three levels of spiritual being can be found through self-reflection
on the nature of one’s own consciousness; in becoming aware of its own
activity, consciousness can focus more upon the content arising, the proc-
esses that give rise to this content or the existential being which is capa-
ble of entering into such processes and giving rise to such content. These
three are simultaneously present to yet distinguishable elements of con-
sciousness. So it is with spiritual perceptions whose origin lies outside
of our own consciousness. Initially, we encounter the content of such
perceptions; only by seeking what underlies this content do we arrive
at an awareness of the processes which give rise to it – which processes
are revealed as emanating (originating) from spiritual beings; finally,
we become aware of the beings themselves.
Three distinct stages of spiritual development can therefore be rec-
ognized. The first stage has been described above as the condition when
spiritual consciousness arises through self-awareness and enables the
ego to begin experiencing in a spiritual world. The next stage of spir-
itual development requires that the ego extinguish from its awareness
the content of the spiritual perceptions arrived at in the first stage
(whether perceptions of its own creative activity or that of the spiritual
world around it) but continue the activity of awareness in spirit. The ego
discovers that a perception of a process of expression remains when the
content of what is thereby expressed is extinguished. A second level of
spiritual experience, the experience of the inner, expressive life of the
spirit, is reached here. A further stage of spiritual development arises
when the ego turns its attention from processes of expression to the
origin of these processes. Spiritual beings become present to conscious-
ness. The three levels of spiritual existence articulated here – activity,
life and being – are mutually distinguishable elements of spiritual life.

34
 We can now begin to comprehend what lies behind the two myster-
ies of soul life mentioned above. (See the section “At the Boundary of
the Spiritual World,” in this chapter.) The principles which the soul uses
to transform its initially subjective experience of the outer world, on the
one hand, and the ideals which it becomes aware of as not originating
in either the outer world or the subjective inner life, on the other hand,
are both impressions from a world which lies on the other side of the
void of consciousness. This is a world of equal objective reality to the
outer world of physicality, life and sentience, but whereas we have no
direct access to the objective reality of these outer worlds, such an ac-
cess is possible to the world of spirit.
The three realms of the spiritual world correspond to the three realms
of the outer world, but whereas the latter’s content is organized and
formed, the spiritual realms’ content is that of the creative activity, life
and beings which lie behind the organization and forms of what we
experience as outer reality. These spiritual realms are as real as those of
the minerals, plants and animals, as real as are our physical body, life
and consciousness. They are neither abstract nor derived from but rather
creative of these more familiar worlds. They are accessible to a conscious-
ness which passes through the gate described above, the gate of the
void of consciousness.

THE NATURE OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

We have just seen that the human being includes a vast panorama
of realms and potentials of being. The questions must be posed: How is
it that these realms and potentials develop only slowly over time? How
is it that – both for humanity as a whole, over eons of evolution, and for
the individual, over the duration of a single earthly life – they unfold
only successively and partially instead of being already present in full
and complete manifestation at the birth of mankind and of each indi-
vidual?

35
 The nature of the human being is immutable. The capacity to incar-
nate this nature in the resistant material of its earthly expression is, by
contrast, only gradually achieved through evolutionary development.
That which is not (yet) present or manifest in this earthly expression is
no less a part of the human being’s inheritance for its remaining a spir-
itual part.
Over the course of humanity’s evolution or of an earthly life, suc-
cessive levels of the human nature are incarnated into earthly forms.
That which remains spiritual acts as a sheath around these incarnated
forms. Evolution and development appear as the successive transfor-
mation of the human potential into incarnated form. Human evolution
and development are thus an expression of the integration of cosmic,
spiritual realms of existence into earthly reality.
In the course of this process, each successive stage of evolution and
development builds upon the (earthly) basis created in the previous
stages. Human consciousness, for example, depends for its appearance
in earthly form on the presence of a physical body and life forces. This
principle is valid for smaller steps of evolution and development, as
well; each step builds upon the forms built up in the previous steps.
All evolution and development are thus the expression of an inter-
action between the spiritual-cosmic worlds and earthly existence. Time
as we know it is also an expression of the relationship between the cos-
mos and the earth. A year is a cyclic expression of the relationship be-
tween the sun and the earth, for example. By their very nature, that is,
because they are expressions of the interactions and relationships be-
tween cosmic and earthly realms of existence, evolution and develop-
ment manifest over cycles of time. They follow universal patterns in
these cycles.
One of these archetypal patterns particularly relevant for the cur-
rent study is a seven-fold developmental metamorphosis. In order to
establish an earthly manifestation of a spiritual principle, seven stages
of development are required. These stages are successive steps of incar-

36
nation into an earthly form. We shall examine the origin and nature of
this archetypal seven-fold metamorphosis from two viewpoints: its cos-
mic archetype (see the chapter titled “The Descent out of the Spiritual
Worlds”) and its earthly manifestation (see the chapter on “Develop-
mental Processes”).
Without understanding the origin of development and the nature
of developmental cycles, our understanding of human development can
never go deeper than an empirical description of the outer characteris-
tics of this development. Through the approach taken here, the inner
nature and motive force of human development and evolution can be
comprehended and their outer characteristics given their proper con-
text.

The Factors Determining Human Development

Human incarnation plays itself out as an interaction between three
spheres: the spiritual being seeking to incarnate into earthly form, the
earthly hereditary stream that gives continuity to the earthly side of
humanity’s evolution, and the mediating environmental influences of
the outer world. The spiritual sheaths are an expression of the indi-
vidual’s spiritual being and the objective nature of the spiritual world.18
The hereditary stream allows this being to link with humanity’s larger
evolution through a particular ‘portal’. These two are outside the im-
mediate and conscious influence of human responsibility. This respon-
sibility for human development lies in giving shape to the natural and
social environment in order to create a supportive environment for hu-
man incarnation.
The physical world, life activity, consciousness, individualities and
spiritual consciousness that the incarnating human being encounters
have a deep and formative effect on the nature of this incarnation. The
task of those responsible for such an incarnation – and on this level we
are all responsible for the whole development of humanity – is thus to
shape all of these aspects into helpful mediators between the individu-

37
al’s spiritual being, on the one hand, and the earthly forms to be estab-
lished upon the basis of the inherited constitution, on the other hand.
This task has general aspects valid for the typical pattern of incar-
nation during our epoch of evolution as well as particular aspects that
vary from decade to decade, from land to land, from people to people
and from individual to individual. The provision for human develop-
ment must evolve with the times, location and cultural tradition as well
as adapting to the individual at hand. Any general description of the
character of or of ways to provide for this development thus has dis-
tinct limitations, for all of the aspects particular to situations and indi-
viduals will be absent. This is a limitation on the present work, as well.

38
 Chapter II
DEVELOPMENT

THE ARCHETYPAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

All form arises through developmental processes. Processes of de-
velopment have an inherent order or sequence, whereby each takes that
which has been achieved by its predecessors to a level that could not
have been reached independently of the prior stages of developments.
Because the formative world in which developmental processes origi-
nate is seven-fold in nature, there are seven fundamentally unique forma-
tive processes.19 These are ordered in an archetypal sequence of devel-
opment. The development of the human being’s earthly life as a whole,
as well as each phase of this life, is determined by this archetypal se-
quence.
A general characterization of this sequence in its archetypal form
will be helpful before entering into the details of how this archetype is
expressed in human and, in particular, in child development. Forma-
tive processes are drawn from a realm that manifests in but lies apart
from the outer, physical world. The nature of these processes is there-
fore challenging both to describe and to grasp.
Two sets of visual depictions of these processes therefore follow the
verbal descriptions below. These depictions will help to convey the
formative character inherent in the processes. They are as follows:
• A sequence of seven images of the stages of development. These
are true to the archetypal character of these processes – and therefore
particularly difficult to grasp.20
• A sequence of seven illustrations of the stages of development
as manifested in the growing plant. These offer a more concrete image
of how the processes appear in a more familiar context.

39
 The descriptions of child development that make up the larger part
of this book draw extensively on the archetypal pattern to development
that will be described in this chapter. The character of the latter will
become clearer as it is brought into relation to the various ages and stages
of development of the child.
In the following descriptions, for each formative process, an impulse
to development gives rise both to a characteristic form stage and to a
characteristic transformation in the entity’s relationship to the environ-
ment.21 These three elements are differentiated typographically in the
descriptions below as follows:

Impulse to development
Form stages
Relationship to environment

I. Through an initial process of formative growth, an entity gains

distinct existence. It still exists in a condition of intuitive unity
with its environment as it is only beginning to establish an inde-
pendent form.

II. The second stage in the formative process is one of development

and metamorphosis; an extended rhythmic form becomes ap-
parent; there is a rhythmic inspiration from the environment.

III. The third stage is one of differentiation and organ building (con-
sciousness); the form becomes more clearly articulated; the en-
vironment is experienced as a formative influence through image.

IV. The fourth stage is one of individuation; the form becomes more
enclosed and prominently self-defined; independence from the
environment is achieved.

40
V. The fifth stage is one of an awakening of inner activity into self-
expression; the form reaches its highest degree of complexity;
the entity attains a capacity for creative activity.

VI. The sixth stage is one of ordering and balance; the form begins
to simplify; it begins to consciously shape its interaction with the
environment.

VII. The seventh stage is one of rigidification,and completion. An

objective, unified gestalt is achieved (which in a next stage can
become the beginning of the next cycle of evolution); the entity
attains purely objective awareness of its environment.

These seven stages can be seen to manifest in all evolution.

Though the sequence of the stages is stable, the intensity and duration
of each stage can vary considerably. These variations significantly affect
the character and development of phenomena. Though such variations
are a rich field for research, further exploration of them is far beyond
the range of this work.22
The development of an entity’s form and that of its relationship
to its environment are in many ways complementary. An entity begins
its development with a minimal form (e.g. a seed). As the initial form
develops, it normally achieves an ever-increasing spatial extension. Its
relationship to the environment, in contrast, begins with a condition of
virtually complete unity with its outer surroundings in the widest pos-
sible sense (the embryo). As the entity gains increasing distinction and
character, the range and intensity of this relationship normally decreases;
the entity pulls back from its environment as it grows out into it. In brief
summary:

41
 Consciousness Form Element Formative Process Environmental Relationship

Periphery Existence Formation Intuitive unity

Concentration Rhythm Metamorphosis Revelation

Separation Articulation Differentiation Image

Self Self-enclosure Individualization Independence

Creativity Complexity Expression Sentience

Relation Interactive Integrating, Gesture, rhythm, life
pattern

Consolidation Unity of gestalt Unifying Physicality

42
 (Figure #1)

I. Through an initial process of formative growth, an entity gains distinct

existence. It still exists in a condition of intuitive unity with its environ-
ment as it is only beginning to establish an independent form.

43
 (Figure #2)

II. The second stage in the formative process is one of development and
metamorphosis; an extended rhythmic form becomes apparent; there is a
rhythmic inspiration from the environment.

44
 (Figure #3)

III. The third stage is one of differentiation and organ building

(consciousness):the form becomes more clearly articulated; the environ-
ment is experienced as a formative influence through image.

45
 (Figure #4)

IV. The fourth stage is one of individuation; the form becomes more en-
closed and self-defined; independence from the environment is achieved.

46
 (Figure #5)

V. The fifth stage is one of an awakening of inner activity into self expres-
sion; the form reaches a capacity for creative activity through its highest
degree of complexity; the entity relates to and is conscious of sentience.

47
 (Figure #6)

VI. The sixth stage is one of ordering and balance; the form begings to
achieve mutual interaction through pattern; the entity becomes aware of
and relates to gesture, life, and rhythm and interaction with the environ-
ment is achieved.

48
 (Figure #7)

VII. The seventh stage is one of simplification, objectification, and comple-

tion. An objective unified gestalt is achieved (which can begin a next cy-
cle of evolution); a relationship to the physical environment is found.

49
THE SEASONS OF LIFE
For a human individuality to enter into earthly incarnation, the in-
dividuality must build up a foundation for its presence in all the realms
of earthly existence in which it is destined to work: physical being, life
and consciousness. An extract from each of these realms must be formed
in such a way that it will be accessible to the influence of the incarnating
human being. The appropriately organized extract will then be capable
of both mirroring the laws and workings of the realm from which it is
drawn for the individuality’s consciousness – only thus can this sphere
be perceived by the latter – and serving as an expressive vehicle for the
individuality in that realm. Without such a mediating organization
whose substance is taken from one of the above-mentioned earthly realms,
but into whose form the ego can incarnate, we would be both insentient
and impotent in the corresponding realm, i.e. incapable of either expe-
riencing or acting.23
The process of establishing these foundational organizations for its
consciousness and activity in the spheres of earthly existence is the first
task of earthly incarnation. The time of human life devoted to building
up these organs of physical being, life and consciousness, during which
period the individuality as self-conscious being is not yet present in (has
not yet descended into) these organizations, could be said to be the pre-
liminary or preparatory period of human life. This period, which lasts
until the completion of these organizations’ development (at approxi-
mately twenty years of age) is the first season of life, childhood.24
This first season of life is followed by a time when the individuality
progressively penetrates, permeates and individualizes the lower or-
ganizations, thus becoming able to experience and work through these
organs from within. This is the time of the human individuality’s true
presence (as self-conscious being) in incarnation. This period, approxi-
mately that of the twenties and thirties, is the second season of life, early
adulthood.

50
 This is then followed by a third season of life, when the human
individuality becomes capable of freeing itself again from these organi-
zations. The individuality accomplishes this in order to perceive and be
active from outside of the narrow bounds of its own organizations; this
it can now do without losing the capacity to dwell within these organi-
zations. This is a period of life which is dependent upon individual ini-
tiative; not everyone who ages necessarily accomplishes the develop-
ment natural to this period of life. This is the time commonly known as
the ‘middle age’ of life, approximately that of the forties, fifties and early
sixties.
The final period of life, when the organizations themselves break
down or lose their capacity to be effective agents of the individuality,
already belongs in a certain sense to the preparation for re-entering the
spiritual worlds. In this sense, it can be reckoned more appropriately as
a transition to a new development than as a season of earthly life.25 This
is the period of ‘old age’, normally beginning after retirement (i.e. after
the separation from earthly tasks). It generally begins in the middle six-
ties and lasts until the end of life.
There are thus distinct seasons of life: childhood, adulthood and
middle age, followed by the transition time of old age. To recognize the
different qualities of the human individuality’s presence in each of these
seasons of human life is a great challenge for our time (which tends to
expect both children and middle-aged members of the community to
behave as if they were in early adulthood).
In the first season of life, the quality of consciousness and capacity
for activity depends upon the extent of the various bodies’ or organiza-
tions’ development. During this period, the progress of formative proc-
esses largely outside the individual’s control determines the stage of
evolution of earthly consciousness. The condition of being dependent
upon the progress of external formative processes for one’s develop-
ment is the condition of childhood.

51
 In the second season of life, the extent to which the individuality
explores, masters and individualizes the nature, limitations and possi-
bilities of the previously established bodily forms determines the qual-
ity of consciousness and capacity for activity; this is the season of the
evolution of the soul. The awakening to one’s own condition is stimu-
lated to a significant extent through social encounters; such encounters
also work to transform the individual’s relationship to his or her own
lower organizations. In this period of life, the individual’s development
is bound up with that of the surrounding community. This condition of
development being dependent upon a transformation in the relation-
ship to the lower organizations is the condition of (early) adulthood.
In the third season of life, during which the individuality can pro-
gressively free itself from the constitutional conditions imposed upon it
by the lower organizations, the progress of this process of liberation
determines the individual’s evolution. This demands a process of self-
transformation. In this stage of life, the individuality must transform its
own being; neither natural evolution nor social context can accomplish
this. Development being dependent upon inner, self-transformation is
the condition of final maturity.

THE PHASES OF LIFE

Within each of the seasons of life, distinct phases of human life can
be described as follows:

The phase of building up the physical body

The phase of building up the life organization
The phase of building up the sentient organization

52
 The phase of developing soul experience (the sentient soul)
The phase of forming soul experience (the rational or artistic soul)
The phase of becoming conscious of soul experience (consciousness
soul)

The phase of developing spirit consciousness

The phase of developing spirit life
The phase of developing spirit being

In the human being’s overall development, each of the phases above

corresponds to an archetypal step of development. (The three phases of
early adulthood are three separate moments in the process of individu-
alization.) We can thus describe seven steps of human development as
follows:

Archetypal Process Level Development

Formation Physical body

Rhythm, growth and metamorphosis
Differentiation and consciousness
Individualization
Inner activity and self expression
Ordering and balance
Objectification and completion
Life and rhythmic organization
Consciousness or sentient
organization
Ego and soul development
Spirit Self or Consciousness
Spirit Life
Spirit Being

THE STAGES (OR YEARS) OF LIFE

Each of the above-mentioned members of the human being must
itself be established through a development consisting of these same
archetypal seven processes. The physical body, for example, must itself

53
first be established, then grow and develop, become differentiated, in-
dividualized, and so forth; so with each of the other members of the
human being. Within each of the phases of development mentioned
above, there are therefore seven stages. Examples of such stages of de-
velopment are the initial formation of the physical body, the individu-
alization of the carrier of consciousness, the creative unfolding of the
rational soul, and so forth.
To avoid confusion here, the term ‘phases’ will be used consistently
to refer to the whole period of development for any single member of
the human being, while the term ‘stages’ will be used to refer to the
individual steps of development within these larger periods. Each stage
of development is the expression of one cycle of the cosmic-spiritual
world’s coming into relationship with the earthly world. For this rea-
son, each lasts approximately one year.26 Each developmental phase
consists of seven developmental stages and therefore lasts approximately
seven years.

ABOUT THE DESCRIPTIONS OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

We can only comprehend the phenomenon of human development
when we can grasp the unity of its underlying principles and its per-
ceptible revelation. These phases and stages are not abstractions, but
describe real forces active and clearly perceptible in the development of
the child. Each child’s development can be seen to be a particular mani-
festation of the universal principles that these phases and stages ex-
press. On the one hand, the underlying principles of human develop-
ment articulated here can serve as a significant help in comprehending
a given child’s development. Experiencing actual children in their de-
velopment, on the other hand, can aid greatly the comprehension of the
archetypal principles articulated here.
Two tendencies in present day child care result from a lack of un-
derstanding of the environment’s mediating role in the formative proc-
ess. One is to allow influences into the child’s environment without re-

54
gard for the child’s developmental age, generally under the pretext that
the child is thus ‘free’ to choose or absorb that which he or she needs or
prefers. The very nature of childhood, however, is that there is no choice
here while members of the child’s being are still in a formative stage
which is itself influenced by the environment, influences from the child’s
environment enter directly into this formative process. If these influ-
ences are inappropriate, the child’s development will be damaged, some-
times severely. Only after the conclusion of each formative stage does
the child become capable of filtering influences in the corresponding
realm of its being.
A second, polar tendency is to overprotect the child from elements
which would indeed have been detrimental at earlier phases of the child’s
development even after the child has acquired the necessary independ-
ence at a given level of his being. Independence, like any other faculty,
is only cultivated and strengthened through successively more challeng-
ing practice, and tends to atrophy or remain immature if the child is
‘shielded’ from any possibility of making use of it.
The needs of childhood change with the developing child. What
makes up appropriate (and inappropriate) environmental or pedagogi-
cal conditions necessarily evolves with these changing needs. Accom-
panying the following descriptions of child development are therefore
descriptions of appropriate environmental and pedagogical supports
for each stage of the child’s development.
To avoid misunderstandings, it should be emphasized that factors
which are mentioned as gaining a particular significance at a given stage
are generally not wholly irrelevant earlier on. Until they achieve an in-
dependent life in the child’s consciousness, however, these elements work
chiefly through factors that have already become formatively active in
the child’s experience. It is described below, for example, how the child
normally wakes up to the various roles in life27 (for example, of the
mother as wife, mother, professional, and so forth) during a certain stage
of development. Such roles remain in themselves essentially irrelevant to

55
the younger child, say an infant, but are perceived through their effects
on his or her care, i.e. through the changes in the rhythms of life and the
sensory environment which result. An older child, on the other hand,
will develop a direct awareness of and relation to the mother’s roles per
se, i.e. aside from their consequences in his care.
This interplay of later developing elements through the earlier ones
should be kept in mind for a thorough understanding of the following
descriptions. At the same time, elements which first develop their true
significance in any particular stage generally continue to be of impor-
tance in later stages. Though sensory experience is mentioned as devel-
oping as an important factor in the beginning of life, it continues to be
of central importance right through earthly life! Though an element may
be chiefly or only mentioned when it begins to take on an especial im-
portance for child development, its significance for development does
not end with that year.

56
 Chapter III

THE PREPARATION

THE DESCENT OUT OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS

There is an aspect of the child’s being that does not come to full
manifestation in the visible forms that develop but rather expresses it-
self in the fact and process of development itself. The development of
the child is not driven forward by, but rather limited by the already
achieved state of the outer organizations. For example, the cause of the
physical body learning to stand upright, speak, express an individual
identity, etc. cannot be found within this body, though the potential to
achieve these capacities must exist within it.
What is the stimulus towards unfolding successive development
stages, if this does not arise from within these outer organizations? How
is it that the potential for future developments lies latent in the child’s
organization well before these developments have begun?

The Origin of the Human Being in the Spiritual Worlds

Human existence moves from life on earth through the portal of
death into an existence in the spiritual worlds, and through the gate of
birth back into a new life on earth. That this is so cannot be proved
theoretically; it is the unfolding of the child’s being that makes us aware
of its origin in another sphere, and the inwardness of the aged person
that makes us aware of an immortal existence independent of the earthly
garment. The capacities that the one brings with show evidence of pre-
vious experiences on the earth; the unfulfilled tasks that the other bears
away give reason to conclude that a future return is a necessary sequel
to the present life.

57
 It is not the intention of this work to trace the ultimate origin or the
final goal of this cycle of being – which is itself continually modifying
its character as the human being evolves – but to describe its nature in
the current epoch of human development. We will begin this descrip-
tion with the moment when a human being, still in the spiritual worlds
between death and a new birth, begins preparing for the next incarna-
tion.
The decision to begin such a preparation is made during the soul’s
sojourn in a spiritual realm whose characteristic consciousness28 is of
an intuitive unity with all being. In this realm, the individuality does
not initially differentiate its own existence from that of the beings around
it. At the moment of turning towards a new incarnation, however, spir-
itual beings begin to gather a first differentiated sphere of being as a
sheath around the soul being prepared for incarnation. This sheath is of
vast dimension29 and still hardly differentiated from the realm around
it. Within this sheath, the consciousness of the human soul in this realm
begins to take on a certain (though still slight) independence from the
world of being which surrounds it.
Through the dawning of the independent consciousness stimulated
by the formation of this first sheath, however, the soul on the path of
incarnation begins to lose its previously direct experience of the beings
around it, beginning to experience instead that which emanates from
them as a revelation of their being, their ‘shining countenance’. This is
the second realm of spiritual existence, where the essence of being has
slipped behind a veil for the soul’s (itself now veiled) consciousness
and only the emanation of beings can now be perceived. In the first phase
of its passage through this realm, the soul, though it now differentiates
its own being from the world of beings surrounding it, still experiences
the emanation of all other beings directly, i.e. as if this were its own self-
emanation as well.
This stage of spiritual experience is characterized by the deepest
comprehension of and empathy with the nature of all beings that is pos-

58
sible while maintaining an awareness of experiencing beings independ-
ent of oneself. (In the preceding condition of intuitive unity, there was
yet more identification but no awareness of being a separate being: iden-
tification rather than empathy.)
After a time, the spiritual beings who reign in this realm begin to
gather a second sheath around the soul on the path towards incarna-
tion. This second sheath lies within the first sheath in a denser form;
that is, it is less transparent to the revelation of beings which emanates
throughout this world. The soul’s own emanation gradually lights up
within this sheath, dimming the experience of that of other beings. The
soul thus becomes aware of its own emanation as distinct from that which
it experiences as coming from its surroundings.
In both the aforementioned realms (as well as in those which are to
follow), those spiritual beings which are more closely connected with
the human individuality, and especially those who have tasks related to
the formation of the sheaths in the particular realm in which it finds
itself at any point of the passage into incarnation, are experienced by
the incarnating soul more directly and as being closer to it, while others
are experienced more weakly and distantly.
As the incarnating soul’s consciousness dims to the revelation ema-
nating from the surrounding beings, it becomes increasingly aware of
their inner activity. This is the third realm of spiritual existence, where
the creative inwardness of the beings around it is experienced as if this
were the soul’s own inner activity – as in one sense it is, for the soul has
not yet developed an inner activity of its own independently of what it
experiences from its environment. In this realm the incarnating soul
experiences a participation in the cooperative endeavor of all beings. It
is a realm of tremendous inner creativity; this activity consists of forma-
tive impulses creative of inner images; these images themselves have
the power of being active.
Spiritual beings active in this realm of inner formative, creative ac-
tivity now begin to form a third sheath around the human soul. Though

59
this sheath lies somewhat closer and more impermeably around the soul
than did the previous sheaths, it is still quite open and transparent in
character. Through the formation of this sheath, the soul’s image or ex-
perience of the activity of the beings surrounding it gradually dims,
while the soul itself begins to be able to exert an inner creative, forma-
tive activity of its own and to experience this as belonging to itself.
The incarnating soul begins to experience the beings of the realm in
which it finds itself now as centers of consciousness or intelligences ex-
isting like a starry world within itself and filling its inner being. This is
the fourth realm of spiritual being, the realm of ego awareness. The spir-
itual beings responsible for this realm now begin to gather a fourth sheath
around the incarnating soul. Thereby, the soul’s experience of this inner
world begins to change. It loses the experience of centers of self-con-
sciousness making up its inner being and begins to experience its own
conscious individuality. It thus becomes aware of itself as an independ-
ent center of consciousness amongst other centers of consciousness,
which are now experienced as being outside of itself. The incarnating
soul does not experience an independent will, but is simply aware for
the first time that it is conscious.
As its experience of the ego world around it diminishes, the incar-
nating soul begins to become aware of an inner realm of surging sym-
pathy and antipathy. These surging forces attract and repel the soul. At
first ceaselessly subject to these impressions, the soul expands under
the influence of sympathy flowing towards it and contracts under the
influence of antipathy repelling it. In this realm of cosmic soul substance,
the sympathies and antipathies of the future incarnation are prepared
and thus the basis laid for an interest in the surroundings in the life on
earth.
The spiritual beings who reign in this realm begin to gather a fifth
sheath around the incarnating individuality, which thereby begins to be
able to experience the soul qualities coming from its surroundings with-
out itself expanding and contracting in response to these. Such expan-

60
sions and contractions as now take place are expressions of its own forces
of sympathy and antipathy. These it experiences within this new sheath,
which lies within and is denser and more opaque than the previous
sheaths.
As this sheath continues to form, the soul loses its experience of the
surrounding cosmic soul substance and begins to experience the forma-
tive activity exerted by spiritual beings, a formative activity which
streams outwards from them into the environment. This is the sixth realm
of spiritual being, whose outwardly creative activity differs from the
earlier (third) realm’s activity of building inner imaginations.
Initially, the incarnating soul experiences this all-pervading forma-
tive activity coming from the surrounding beings as if it were its own
activity. Gradually, the spiritual beings who are responsible for this realm
begin gathering another sheath around the soul, lying within and more
dense or resistant than the previous sheaths. This allows the soul to
experience the formative activity of the surrounding beings as external
to itself. The soul’s own formative activity also begins to stir in this
sheath; this activity begins to work into the surrounding environment.
In this realm, the human soul thus develops an experience of creative
activity.
As the influence of the formative activity surrounding it diminishes,
the incarnating soul begins to experience the dynamic structure of the
physical cosmos (the fixed stars and planets) as its own inner world.
This is the seventh realm of spiritual being. For the soul it is as if the
entire cosmos is its own physical body, and the evolution of the cosmos
is experienced as its own evolution.
From this physical cosmos, a seventh and last sheath is now gath-
ered, a microcosm of this physical macrocosm, denser than the previ-
ous sheaths (that is, less permeable to higher spiritual realms) but not
yet filled out with matter. At a certain point this sheath ceases to follow
the changes in the external cosmos and takes on more of a fixed struc-
ture. The incarnating soul thus begins to lose the immediate experience

61
of the dynamic nature of the physical cosmos; only an image of this
cosmos remains imprinted in this sheath. The physical cosmos itself
begins to be experienced as a world apart, while the soul begins to ex-
perience within this sheath a physical being of its own.
The period of sheath formation is completed as this spiritual-physi-
cal sheath unites with the earthly stream of heredity. The period of earthly
incarnation follows, when the sheaths must be transformed into physi-
cal bodies.

The Guardians of the Threshold

We have traced the path of the soul towards incarnation, beginning
with that moment between death and a new birth when the soul turns
toward a new incarnation. In order to fully understand the descent to-
wards incarnation, the time of the soul’s ascent through the spheres of
the spiritual world must also be considered: the events between the
moment of death and the above-mentioned midnight hour. In the course
of the ascending journey, the soul passes through all the same spheres
of the spiritual world as on the incarnating path, but in the reversed
sequence.
In each sphere of this ascent, the soul encounters a being which has
the task of holding back whatever aspects of the soul’s nature that are
insufficiently ripe to be brought into the higher realms of the spiritual
world. These aspects are condensed into a kind of seed-form, an extract
containing the essence of that part of the soul’s development in the given
realm that must now be left behind. The soul thereby is able to receive
impulses for its development from higher realms unencumbered by the
limitations that these negative or unripe aspects of its development
would have put upon it, had it carried these with it into the higher
spheres.
As the soul descends again towards incarnation after the midnight
hour, it will re-encounter in each spiritual sphere the being who guarded
these seeds while the soul has spent time in higher realms of spiritual
existence. These guardians of the human being’s development now have

62
the duty to give these seeds of the past back to the soul descending
towards a new incarnation for transformation.
Other beings in each spiritual realm have the task of gathering to-
gether an archetypal representation or microcosm of the given realm
into a sheath for the incarnating soul, a microcosm completely inde-
pendent of the incarnating soul’s particular nature and past develop-
ment. If this microcosm of the spiritual world were to become the soul’s
sheath, as these beings intend, this sheath would be formed entirely
according to the objective conditions prevailing in the spiritual world at
the moment of the formation of this microcosmic representation. The
soul would then appear in incarnation in a manner untouched by its
previous development and solely devoted to serving the objective needs
of the spiritual world.
The beings who work together in each realm are represented by a
particular being who serves as the guardian of the spiritual world’s ob-
jective course of development. This being can be called the Greater
Guardian (in contrast with the being who has preserved the lower form
of the human being, which can be called the Lesser Guardian).
As the Greater Guardian comes forward, the soul experiences the
whole glory of each spiritual realm (in miniature) in the microcosm be-
fore it. In the strongest possible terms, the Greater Guardian presents to
the soul the obligations and goals through which the soul’s future life
should serve the world’s objective needs and development. The soul’s
whole being yearns for the glory of the sheath before it and for the ful-
filment of the cosmic goals.
However, the Lesser Guardian also comes forward, bringing the seed
of what is left unredeemed from past lives. The soul recognizes this
seed, which it experiences as being as dark and dismal as the microcos-
mic sheath before it is glorious, as a part of its own being which it once
left behind. The Lesser Guardian speaks earnestly to the soul of the ne-
cessity to transform what is now being carried over from the past. The
soul is faced with the sobering task of taking up and transforming its
own undeveloped nature.

63
 There is now a kind of exchange or conversation between the Lesser
Guardian, whose duty it is to ensure that the soul takes up again the
destiny which it created in its previous existence, and the Greater Guard-
ian, representing the beings who have gathered a microcosm of the spir-
itual world intended as a sheath for the soul. Both guardians seek to
influence the formation of the incarnating soul’s spiritual sheath. For
any soul with a significant number of past incarnations, aspects of the
soul as conditioned by its past nature are inevitably irreconcilable with
the more objective needs of destiny presented by the Greater Guardian.
Thus, the requirements of transforming that which is borne over from
the past and the destiny that the spiritual world would require from the
future life are to a certain extent mutually incompatible.
Would the Lesser Guardian succeed in forming the incarnating soul’s
sheath from the seed of past development, human beings would need
to devote an ever greater part of each earthly life to transforming their
relationships to and past destiny with those individualities, cultural
streams, and so forth, that they had already met in past lives simply in
order to work through what remained unresolved from these previous
encounters. Ever fewer new destiny-building encounters would be pos-
sible. The end of this development would be a kind of war of all against
all, in that each individual would be unable to creatively engage with –
or, indeed, have anything but antipathy for – others’ destinies.
If, on the other hand, the Greater Guardian succeeded in giving the
wholly objectively formed sheath to the human soul, the world devel-
opment would indeed be furthered by the soul’s incarnation, but the
individuality itself would no longer be able to develop, to experience
an individuated consciousness. Such undeveloped qualities as souls
previously possessed would remain and thus accumulate in the spir-
itual world. These qualities would become increasingly dominant. The
microcosms of these realms formed by the Greater Guardian would have
to include these negative qualities as well.30 While attempting to fulfill
the objective tasks of destiny, souls would actually begin to be increas-

64
ingly influenced by the accumulating negative qualities without being
able to become conscious of this. A steadily darkening and increasingly
subjective spiritual world would result, and the domination of this spir-
itual darkness would make the fulfilment of earthly tasks increasingly
more and more difficult and eventually impossible for any soul enter-
ing incarnation.
Two demands are thus made here upon the human soul: that it take
up its individual destiny in order to transform it, and that it serve the
spiritual world’s plan for world destiny.
At this crux, it is possible for another soul present in the relevant
spiritual realm (whether on the ascending or descending path) to come
forward: another soul who is willing and able to take upon itself an
aspect of the first soul’s destiny while still fulfilling the claims of its
own destiny. Only through the soul which offers its help in this way
sacrificing some element of its own potential future development can it
take up another soul’s tasks, however. Through this sacrifice, it can help
the first soul to devote itself to overcoming its own limitations, and yet
to fulfill the objective tasks of world destiny.
Likewise, this first incarnating soul may be called or may step for-
ward of its own accord to take up tasks of another soul’s destiny in the
service of the objective world development so that in the coming life
this other soul may fulfill or resolve aspects of its individual karma which
would otherwise not be addressed.31
Three aspects of destiny are thus united in the sheath-building process:
• universal karma as a microcosm of the spiritual sphere brought
by the Greater Guardian, the star path of destiny,
• individual, unresolved karma from past lives brought by the Lesser
Guardian, the moon path of destiny,
• and the sacrifices of those souls who take up the task of serving as
another soul’s guardian – and thus become in a sense the equal of
the other two guardians in this sphere, the sun path of destiny.

65
 Which of these elements will dominate in a given incarnation de-
pends upon many factors. The sheath formed as a result of these factors
is thus complex. It will have aspects where it is denser, harder and more
resistant to spiritual influence – where past development has created
karmic knots or inner challenges to be overcome – and aspects where it
is more finely spread out and receptive. The form of the resulting sheath
can be imagined as that of a maple seed pod, with thickenings where
the harder seeds sit and flowing translucent wings where it is more open
and permeable. This is, of course, only an analogy; a spiritual sheath is
of a different nature than the matter out of which a plant is formed.

THE DESCENT OF THE SHEATHS: CONCEPTION

Conception is a complex event that extends over a considerable pe-
riod of time. The higher sheaths normally begin to descend long before
the time usually associated with conception, uniting themselves with
the mother’s being and carrying to her extraordinary reserves of love
and cosmic wisdom. This wisdom becomes evident through the prepa-
rations she undertakes for the event. The child’s higher sheaths also
seek to include and unite with the father’s being.
A unique, especially spiritual love ignites between the parents. It is
this love that brings the parents together inwardly and outwardly dur-
ing this preparatory period.32 Through the sheaths that link them to-
gether in the spiritual worlds, the parents are united during this time of
preparation leading up to conception. These spiritual influences through
the presence of the child’s sheaths are given form as a conscious deed
when the parents join together in the act of conception. At this moment,
the child’s ego-sheath joins and intermingles with the united ego-spheres
of the parents.33 This condition normally lasts a relatively short time,
and the parents’ egos regain their normal condition of mutual independ-
ence fairly quickly. The father’s ego separates from the intermingled
state, while the child’s ego-sheath remains with the mother’s being for

66
the duration of the pregnancy and beyond, the separation following the
birth being a gradual one.
The spiritual world responds to the human deed by allowing the
processes of fertilization to take place. The sentient sheath then begins
descending and uniting itself with the mother’s being, more particu-
larly with the womb, preparing for the anchoring of the fertilized egg to
the womb wall. Under the influence of this sheath, the growing organ-
ism begins to develop the three characteristic tissue layers which be-
come the basis for the development of the limb-metabolic, rhythmic and
nerve-sense organizations.
The life sheath descends next, bringing about the formation of areas
of more differentiated organization as a preliminary stage to actual or-
gan formation. Finally, the physical-spiritual sheath, which has lingered
longest in the spiritual worlds, descends; at this time, the growing or-
ganism begins taking on the human form, including the typically hu-
man differentiation and organization along the up-down, right-left and
front-back axes. At this stage, the sheaths’ organization of the individu-
ality incarnating is completely united with the organism in the moth-
er’s womb and the full process of conception is concluded.

67
 Chapter IV

THE FIRST PHASE OF LIFE: EARLY CHILDHOOD

THE SENSES
We experience the physical world through the gate of the senses.
During the child’s incarnation into the physical body, one of the most
important factors in the child’s development is therefore the relation-
ship to sensory experience.
There are several distinct realms of experience in the physical world
that the various senses open up to us. The conditions of our own physi-
cal body, our interior physicality, are revealed through the senses of bal-
ance, movement and well being. The sense of balance refers to the objec-
tive orientation of the physical body in the three directions of space.34
The sense of movement refers to the internal movements of the body.35
The sense of well being refers to the physical state of stress or relaxa-
tion, tiredness or freshness present in the body.36 Taken together, these
express the physical body’s orientation in space (balance), transformation
in time (movement) and condition of consciousness (well being).
Other senses tell us of conditions in the outer world. Different pos-
sibilities of experiencing the world are offered by each of the following
physical states: solid, liquid, gaseous, warmth, light and sound. The sense
of touch reveals the conditions at the boundary where there is mutual
contact between our physical body and the outer physical world, where
something resistant (i.e., solid, or at least viscous) in the outer world is
encountered and held back at our outer boundary layer (the skin). The
senses of taste, smell, warmth, sight and sound depend upon something of
the outer world (of a liquid, gaseous, warmth or light nature, respec-
tively) not just touching this boundary but actually permeating it and

68
entering right into us. They reveal the conditions prevailing in the outer
physical world and are progressively freer of our inner physical condi-
tions. The sense of sound actually takes us to another boundary, for some-
thing of the inner nature of the outer world – of the sounding body – is
conveyed to us here: though a hollow and a solid piece of wood are
indistinguishable to the senses of touch, sight, and smell, they sound
quite differently when tapped.
The less familiar, ‘higher’ senses progressively leave behind the outer
aspect of the outer world and penetrate further into its inner nature. We
perceive, for example, the communicative nature of a musical motif or
of words of a language even when the music or language is unfamiliar
to us. The perception of an inherent significance is independent of the
understanding of the significance. This is as true for natural phenomena
as for human communication; in the act of perception we can already
recognize a bird song or even the ‘gestalt’ of a tree as having a signifi-
cance differentiated from aural or visual ‘noise’. Even if we do not com-
prehend the language, the bird song and the tree are recognizably ‘words’
of nature. This is the activity of the sense of significance or – as it is usu-
ally called – word.
In a purposefully constructed object (e.g., a bird’s nest or a ham-
mer), we perceive an inherent thought,37 and indeed independently of
whether we can clearly articulate this thought or not. It is for this reason
that archaeological artifacts, however simple, are readily distinguish-
able from purely naturally occurring objects (assuming that the artifact
has not been reduced by time and wear to the extent that it has taken on
its natural character again). The thought which has created an artifact
as a sense-perceptible image of itself lies inherent in the physical object
and is thus accessible to sense experience through the sense of thought.
Finally, we can recognize the imprint of an ego through our sensory
experience. For example, it is possible to distinguish through the sen-
sory perception alone whether a person is inwardly awake in what he
or she is saying or doing. Through the same sense, it is distinguishable

69
whether a clay pot or a picture is a mechanical reproduction or an origi-
nal artistic work; the sense of ego can perceive in the penetrated form
the imprint of the ego. The sense of ego is the culmination of the possi-
bilities of sense experience of what is implicit in the outer world.
The senses of ego, thought and communicative significance (or word)
(and to a certain extent the sense of sound as well) reveal that which is
implicit in the outer world.38 The senses of sound, sight, warmth, smell
and taste (and to a certain extent the sense of touch) reveal that which is
explicit in the outer world. The senses of balance,39 movement and life
reveal our inner physical condition.

Cultivating the Senses

In the first seven years of life, the young child is incarnating into
sense experience and thus into an experience of the physical world. The
pedagogical task of these years is to a significant extent that of cultivat-
ing the child’s sense experience. This can be done in various realms.
The world of nature offers rich experiences to the lower senses of
movement, balance, touch and life, as well as to those of the middle
realm, the senses of taste, smell, warmth, sight and sound.
All artistic experiences enliven the middle senses; this is, however,
somewhat modified by and dependent upon the individual nature of
the art. Dance, the process of creating an artistic physical environment,
and modelling (sculpture) work strongly with the lower senses of touch,
life, movement and balance. Painting, drawing and decoration empha-
size the senses of sight and taste (it is here especially that we use the
phrase ‘in good taste’). Music, poetry and story emphasize sound, word
and thought; eurythmy40 links these higher senses (and the sense of
ego) with the senses of movement, balance and life. Social life, also ca-
pable of being raised up to an art, cultivates the higher senses of word,
thought and ego.
Cultural forms have evolved in part to balance sense experience.
We can discover this influence in many realms. In social encounters,

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which in themselves tend to emphasize the higher senses, food and drink
as well as a more general attention to the well-being of the guests are
given such a prominent role in order that the lower and middle senses
not be neglected. The art of higher cultures brings elements of motif
and significance into the visual arts (which otherwise tend to live in the
lower and middle senses) and elements of movement, life and balance
into the auditory arts (which otherwise tend to live in the middle and
upper senses). The example of eurythmy was already mentioned above
as connecting the upper and lower senses; when the visual element also
plays a strong role (through the experience of color and light), the mid-
dle senses are strengthened. Similarly, nature, whose native wildness
speaks strongly to the lower senses, gains perceptibly in elements ac-
cessible to the higher senses when brought under cultivation.
Experiences of nature, art and social life are especially impor-
tant for maintaining good health for both mother and child in these first
years when they include balanced elements from all the senses. Extremes
in imbalances in sense experience can lead to either a dependence upon
or a compulsive avoidance of certain kinds of sense stimulation.
When we can be actively creative in the sense world – whether in
nature, art or social life – the experience is all the richer. The will en-
gagement involved in tending a garden, painting or singing, or caring
for family or friends involves a deep penetration of the ego into sensory
experience, whereas more passive sensory experiences – for example,
walking in nature or enjoying the arts – primarily play into the feeling-
soul life. Wholly unconsciously absorbed sensory experiences, on the
other hand, have their effect primarily upon the life forces; how differ-
ently we wake after sleeping in the countryside amongst wild flowers
and under the stars than we do in a noisy, urban environment! When
the human being’s ego and consciousness are actively engaged with
nature, art and social life, the former can be transformed and even healed
by the balancing effects which these can bring to sense experience. This
is as true for the child as for the adult; even though the child’s higher

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members are not yet in incarnation, the vessel being prepared for these
can be made healthy and strong.
In any case, the young child will tend not to accept passive experi-
ences; a healthy drive for the will to be active in the body is part of this
stage of incarnation. Thus, active engagement with the world is essen-
tial in the first seven years. Activity united with sense experience – aes-
thetically cultivated activity in the physical world – is a guiding ideal
for both mother and child during this first phase of the child’s upbring-
ing.

DEVELOPMENTAL PHASES (I): THE PHYSICAL BODY

First Developmental Stage: Formation
The formation of the physical body is the
expression of the descent of the physical sheath,
which contains an individualized spiritual im-
age of the physical macrocosm (see the chapter
“The Guardians of the Threshold”). This physi-
cal sheath begins to be transformed into a physi-
cal body, using the materials of the inherited
body as a basis and in conjunction with the in-
fluences from the environment.
The physical body begins its life and development in a state of un-
conscious unity with its environment. This comes to immediate expres-
sion in the embryonic germ’s absolute unity with the mother’s being; in
this stage of life, the child has neither an independent existence nor an
independent experience.
In the course of the child’s development while still in the womb,
the sense organs are established. Sense impressions initially penetrate
directly into the child’s organism; this can be seen in the embryo’s reac-
tions to sensory stimulus. During the prenatal period, the mother pro-
tects the child from too direct contact with such stimuli; with birth, the
sense organs must take over this task. By creating a barrier to and thus

72
halting the influx of experiences from the physical environment, the
sense organs enable these experiences to become conscious, rather than
directly penetrating into and forming the child’s physical being. Thereby,
the child arrives at an awareness that it exists in the physical realm, that
it has a body.
Even before the child is born, the lower senses of movement, bal-
ance, life and touch awaken and are active. The child begins to become
aware of the physical world through the interior of its own body (and in
the interior of the mother’s body)! Through the sense of touch, a first
contact is made with the world outside the body (still the interior of the
mother’s womb). In the case of the middle and higher senses (vision,
hearing, taste.), only what is mediated through the mother comes to the
child.
By the end of, or shortly after the end of the prenatal period, the
sense organs have essentially reached their full functional development,
whereas the rest of the physical body (including the tissues which sup-
port the sense organs)41 requires further influences from higher levels
of man’s being in order to achieve their full development.
By the end of this stage of development, the physical body has re-
ceived its essential form, which will now form the basis for all of the
rest of the child’s development. All of the essential elements of the adult
physical body are at this time already astonishingly clearly established,
though they will of course continue to develop.

Upbringing during and immediately following the pregnancy

Though all twelve senses – flavors and smells, sights and sounds,
movement and balance, touch and life, warmth, word, thought and ego
– should play a rich and balanced role in the mother’s (and thus the
child’s) life during pregnancy, experiences of the lower senses are par-
ticularly important for the child. As mentioned above, these are espe-
cially stimulated by experiences of the natural world. It should not be
underestimated how much of what the mother experiences is shared by

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the child. An appreciation of the sense world and a love for cultivating
the physical environment is thus the greatest gift the mother can give
the child now.
Towards the end of this year, the physical body has built up enough
of an independently sustainable existence to be able to leave the protec-
tion of the mother’s womb, which offered an environment suitable for a
being without its own protection from environmental influences. Espe-
cially in the months directly following the birth, however, the outer en-
vironment should be shaped with an equal degree of protection and
care as the womb offers, for the child must master the leap to unmediated
sense impressions which its expulsion from the womb precipitates. Thus,
the child should experience the protective presence of the mother es-
sentially continuously during this time.42 In the past, the mother was
given a period of protection to enable this to happen (as well as to re-
gain her own strength). The child’s physical body achieves the inde-
pendence required to be able to meet the outer sensory environment
without this protective presence by the conclusion of the first year of
life, counting from conception.
It should perhaps go without saying, but of course a lifestyle which
is healthy for the mother now is important for the child’s well being as
well. Attention to her own changing needs, especially those of her physi-
cal body, is actually another way of cultivating the physical environ-
ment of the child!

Second Developmental Stage: Rhythm

The second stage of the physical body’s de-
velopment begins with or shortly after the birth
of the child.43 During this phase of life, the child
is no longer completely receptive to and in as
complete a state of unity with his environment
as he was in the womb. He receives impressions
from the beings around him and takes these in
as he does his breath or his milk, to be digested

74
before being absorbed. He also begins to perceive his body more clearly,
thereby becoming aware of his own expressive activity.
While the child was still in the womb, the life processes of circula-
tion, breathing, digestion, and so forth, were essentially effected and
supplied by (or at least supported by) the mother’s organism. The or-
ganic activities of digestion, breathing, and circulation now are anchored
in and guided from within the child’s physical body: he takes his first
breath, takes in nutrition which he must digest, and so on.44 The child
begins to experience the flow of these life processes, which form a basis
for the later incarnation of the life and formative organization. Such
processes are essentially rhythmic in nature. Some of these rhythms have
shorter cycles (e.g. circulation and breath) while others have cycles that
last an entire day (e.g. the liver and sleep and waking rhythms). Over
the course of this first year after birth, these cycles become independent
of environmental influences.
At this stage, the child’s environment works directly and formatively
into and through the life processes, thus stimulating the child’s organic
activity and movement organism. Sense impressions continue to work
formatively on the physical body as well. This stimulates, for example,
the production of sounds; these remain expressions of the organic activ-
ity and do not yet belong to the realm of language proper.
The experience of the uprightness of those around him stimulates
the child to imitate this; he thus spends much of this year gradually
raising himself up, achieving thereby a successively more upright pos-
ture.45 Balance and movement in the physical realm depend upon be-
ing able to maintain an inner dynamic balance between the organic im-
pulses which urge the young being in one direction or another. Achiev-
ing balance between and control over the organic activities is thus a
prerequisite for the achievements of standing and walking.
It is also a year of the child-finding a relationship to the human be-
ings around him and learning to identify them through their manner of
expression. The child begins to recognize various people through their

75
looks, manner of speech, and so on. (The mother is initially identified
differently, out of the state of unity already established in the first stage
of life within her womb; this gradually yields to an identification of her
through her manner of expression.)
Upbringing during the first year after birth
Now that the mother’s bodily rhythms no longer surround the child,
the child’s rhythmic-organic life begins to develop independently of the
mother’s organization. The pre-natal rhythms were active without the
mother’s conscious effort. These must now be replaced in the child’s
life by consciously cultivated, healthy daily rhythms46 . Thus from the
very beginning, rhythms of eating, sleeping, etc. take on such an impor-
tance. These rhythms must now take hold in the child’s physical body.
If rhythms are imposed too strongly from the environment, so that
the child’s body’s attempts to establish a rhythmic pattern are ignored
or overwhelmed, the rhythm-building aspect of the child which is now
incarnating is prevented from taking hold of her own physical body
through this realm. This creates later hindrances for the incarnation of
the life organization, which is now being prepared in the establishment
of the rhythmic-organic life. If, on the other hand, the child’s whims or
transitory expressions of need are exaggerated in importance and un-
duly attended to, again a rhythmic life cannot be established in the physi-
cal body, for in this case the attempts of the child’s organic-rhythmic
organization to establish a stable rhythm are continually disturbed by
its own physical organization, or more precisely, by the reactions of adults
to this. The rhythmic organization’s attempts to create and maintain a
stable rhythm must thus be given form and strengthened in a balanced
way, neither imposing a fixed rhythm or following the child’s demands
slavishly.
Over the course of this year of life, the sphere of those who care for
the child normally begins to open out to include a larger circle, often the
whole household, whereas in the period spent in the womb, and gener-
ally in the initial period thereafter, essentially the whole burden falls on
the mother. All of those responsible should join together to bring a rhyth-

76
mic-ritual nature into the life and care of the child, thus stimulating the
child’s own rhythmic experience. From changing a diaper to singing a
lullaby, from arranging a table decoration to bathing the baby, such rhyth-
mic, regular elements strengthen the child’s incarnation at this time.
Such elements as little songs and verses, especially when accompanied
by rhythmic movements, begin to cultivate the child’s life forces.

Third Developmental Stage: Differentiation

The child now incarnates into the three sys-
tems of the limb-metabolic, circulatory and
breath (rhythmic), and nerve-sense spheres. The
environment is now held back and experienced
in these spheres, giving rise to a conscious rep-
ertoire of activities, emotions and concepts in a
form still bound to their bodily expressions.47
Linguistic expressions in the child’s environment
will begin to be connected to these first conscious experiences; language
thus awakens imitatively in connection with them. The development of
language also requires the coordination of the breath (will-metabolic
pole), larynx (feeling-rhythmic pole) and mouth (thinking-conscious
pole) which is now possible in this stage of development.
It is important for the healthy development of both the intentional,
feeling and conceptual as well as the linguistic capacity of the child that
the natural and human environment offers a sufficient range and qual-
ity of experiences which stimulate the child’s activity on all these levels.
The coordination, sensitivity and comprehension which develop from
such experiences provide the basis for the later incarnation of the sen-
tient organization.

Upbringing for the one- to two-year-old child

The will stream begins to incarnate into the child’s physical body.
The will of the child was previously chiefly an expression of his own
organic activity, and even here required fulfilment by those around it

77
(to bring food, change a diaper, fetch a toy, lift him up, and so on). This
organic activity now recedes in importance and an independent life of
will develops, while at the same time the child’s physical body begins
to be capable of executing his will for the first time: to move about, fetch
what is wanted; in a late stage, even to control the bladder.
The pedagogical task is thus to shape the environment in such a
manner that the child’s will can effectively work through the physical
body. A spectrum of tasks in the physical world48 (cooking, gardening,
building, repairing, handwork and crafts), on the one hand, and a pro-
vision for the unfolding of some sort of imitative activity by the child,
on the other hand, are key elements in encouraging the healthy devel-
opment of the child’s will life from this stage on. Example and imitation
should play principal roles here. The young child takes up and imitates
inwardly all that takes place in his environment. He then seeks to give
this inner impression outer expression. In other words, the child will
seek to engage in activities stimulated by inner impressions of the activi-
ties which he experiences. The healthy child’s will thus needs no more
stimulation than the experience of such activities taking place around
him already provides;49 there only needs then to be a concrete possibil-
ity for the child to actually live out his imitative will, i.e. time, some sort
of materials (the child is usually not particular; materials drawn from
nature’s rich store are particularly suitable) – sometimes a minimum of
attention from the adult will also be required to facilitate matters.
The child chiefly imitates the will life of those around him. In all
inner life, however, there is a fine will activity which plays into the life
of feeling and thinking. The child imitates such will elements in these
realms as well: sympathies or antipathies, for example, or connections
made between concepts will be picked up even though the underlying
feelings and the concepts themselves may not be understood yet.
Stories drawn from simple events in the real world may now be
introduced to enrich and deepen the child’s experience. These should
be examples of life meaningful to the child and worthy of forming the
concepts of life that will live in him in the years to come.

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Fourth Developmental Stage: Individuation
Up until now, the warmth of the environ-
ment has worked directly and formatively into
the child’s being without the child becoming
conscious of the state of her own warmth or-
ganization.50 This applies to the inner warmth
which surrounded or came towards her from
the environment as well.
During the fourth year of the physical
body’s development, the warmth coming towards the child begins to
be met and checked by the child’s own warmth organization. The latter
begins to gain in independence from the environment. Through this, an
awareness of the condition of her own and the environment’s warmth
or coldness arises.
This differs from a sense perception of warmth (‘this feels hot, this is
cold to the touch’), which is already present in the first year of life. The
child is now not incarnating into the physical sense of warmth, but into
the warmth organization which permeates all of her being. She is now
capable of maintaining this and being conscious of its condition. This
awareness does not yet differentiate clearly between that which is in-
cluded in the sphere of the child’s warmth of soul (which may include
the mother, a doll, and so forth) and the more limited sphere of physical
warmth (which is limited to the immediate environment of the physical body).
Not only the child’s own possessions but the physical world in gen-
eral is experienced in association with ownership. This is not merely a
conceptual linkage, but an actual experience of a real ego presence in
that which a person has permeated her identity.
In permeating the entire body, the warmth organization mediates
an experience of self connected with the physical body. The child be-
comes aware of the physical body as the center of her individual being
and experience. The self-consciousness, or ego experience, that devel-
ops at this time and that is mediated by the child’s (inner and outer)
warmth-body forms the basis for the later incarnation of the adult ego.

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 The awakening to this experience of ego first results in the child
being able to say ‘no’ to others and then in her being able to say ‘I’ of
herself. These are two distinct stages of individuation: finding the bound-
ary between oneself and the outer world and finding one’s own iden-
tity. The child now becomes able to differentiate her personal sphere
from that of others.
The child begins to experience her own physical body as her ‘home’.
She should thus begin to be able to feel ‘at home’ outside the house, in a
variety of environments, as long as she feels well in her own body in the
situation. Previous to this stage of development, an adult who repre-
sented ‘home’ to the child was needed to carry the experience of being
safe and ‘at home’ for the child when outside of the physical home.

Upbringing for the two- to three-year-old child

Up until now the child’s sense of personal self has been closely as-
sociated with her perceptions, activity and stream of will. This now be-
gins to change; the child begins to experience her individuality as asso-
ciated with the body and thus as stable in the midst of the flux of chang-
ing impressions and expressions. To meet this awakening individuality
of the child with recognition and warmth is the new pedagogical task.
The child’s bodily-based ego awareness is very connected with her
experience of warmth. Warmth allows her to permeate the physical body
with ego awareness; inner and outer coolness mean that the ego is un-
able to permeate the body. Thus, both kinds of warmth must continue
to be brought to the child while recognizing and acknowledging the
very individuality and independence that are developing thereby, for
the child will increasingly wish to establish her own definition of the
appropriate nature and quantity of soul and bodily warmth.
When the adult’s own ego is healthy and balanced, the child’s dawn-
ing recognition and establishment of the boundary between the adult
and herself – as expressed in the above-mentioned ability to say ‘no’ on
the one hand and ‘I’ on the other hand – need not be problematic. Room

80
for the assertion of independence can be given without allowing the
child to intrude upon one’s own individuality (or that of others).
Experiencing other ego-conscious beings in the environment stimu-
lates the ego experience. A child primarily exposed to an environment
lacking in ego experiences will not be able to properly discover her own
nature as a self-conscious being. In earlier times, this was discovered
with children brought up by wolves; now this applies to children
‘brought up’51 by television and other media, as well as to situations
where the parents themselves lack a clear ego center due to dependen-
cies or other conditions.
A child of this age will look for an ego presence in all that she expe-
riences: in the dog, the flower, the stone, and so forth. This is quite
healthy! Of course, the human being has an ego which is incarnated in
the physical body, whereas this is not true of other beings.
A true and healthy picture of the ‘ego’ of the beings of nature work-
ing in from around rather than within their physical forms can be given
through descriptions of elemental beings such as the gnomes, flower
fairies, and so on. For man-made objects, on the other hand, the ego
experience lives through experiences of their manufacture. The child
can be shown or told how they have been made in order to have a pic-
ture of the human ego and activity which has formed these.
Machines and technology present a special challenge, as these are
hardly appropriate to the years of early childhood. When encounters
with these cannot be avoided, it is best that the child be able to experi-
ence the human being who is responsible for controlling these, or at
least to comprehend that someone is responsible for them. In a certain
sense, the locomotive driver is the ‘ego’ for the locomotive.52
As a result of differentiating her individuality from her activity, the
child now becomes conscious of taking on a role. She begins to say, ‘I
am the builder boy now’, or ‘I will be the cook’, rather than simply
building and cooking. To cultivate this experience, the child should ex-
perience a range of life roles in the environment. This can be through
the parent or other household members as they take on their various

81
roles in life, of course, but it is especially important to meet a variety of
individuals in their occupational role at this time: the baker, the farmer,
the builder, and so forth.
To support the experience of the body as a ‘dwelling’ that is now
developing, there should be the opportunity to build little houses into
which the child can withdraw. Simple materials which the child can
manipulate herself are generally best for this, though help from the adult
in building ‘her house’ will generally be sought at first.
The child will now usually like to hear stories about herself or about
other individuals whom she knows. These may be taken from times
past or even simply drawn from what she did that day. Such stories
strengthen the memory and individuality of the child.
In one sense, the four stages of the child’s physical development
described above constitute a time when the most fundamental and im-
portant basis for the human being’s life is being established. This pe-
riod begins with conception and ends approximately three years and
three months after birth. Hindrances arising from an inappropriate outer
environment during these first years can result in the ego’s being too
weakly anchored in the lower organizations and thus being unable later
to take hold of its life on earth. A lack of love for the child’s being, on the
other hand, though all outer necessities may be provided, can result in
the ego losing its experience of itself as a cosmic being, connecting only
in an materialistic way with its earthly existence.

Fifth Developmental Stage: Active Imagination

In the next stage of development, the child
incarnates into the image activity, the creative
sphere of his being. The pictorial or image qual-
ity of the world, which has previously been di-
rectly formative in the child’s being, begins to be
held back by the child’s forces. Inner pictures or
representations begin to unfold for the child of
the intention behind the outer deeds, the feelings

82
behind the outward emotions and the thought life behind the concepts
that he experiences. Not only human beings, all of nature – even inani-
mate objects – begins to be experienced inwardly and imaginatively as
expressing such intentions, feelings and concepts. These experiences
form the basis for the later development of the faculty of creative imagi-
nation as an organ for comprehending the world.
The sentient qualities that others have linked with objects are now
experienced through the objects. Bad language and other precocious
behavior arise at this time as a result.
In the child’s dream-like consciousness, images received from the
environment flow into and out of the child’s own intentional activity,
emotions and concepts. He weaves together with the environment in
the inner light of imagination. An essentially artistically expressive life
that comes alive through such varied modes as social experience, move-
ment, verse and story, song, drawing, painting and modelling, house
building, and so forth, unfolds out of this creative inner world of imagi-
nation. It is a phase where life and art are self-expression. It is the crea-
tive process which is essential here; the results obtained remain largely a
somewhat incidental expression of this process.

Upbringing for the three- to four-year-old child

Until this stage elements of imagination and creativity entered into
the child’s life unconsciously through imitating others’ activities. Outer
experiences were transformed pictorially and imaginatively into inner
images, then reconstructed or dramatized in outer activity in a similar
pictorial, imaginative way. The resulting imitative behavior could eas-
ily appear hilarious or peculiar to an adult by virtue of the remarkable
transformation between the original activity and the child’s reconstruc-
tion.
The intensity of the child’s inner experience of the environment now
begins to diminish; simultaneously, the environment begins to be more
clearly perceived. Outer activity begins to be experienced as lacking in
inner life unless it is transformed or illumined by a consciously intro-

83
duced imaginative or creative element. Imagination and creativity thus
need to be much more consciously given now as stimulus in the child’s
environment. For example, when washing up, whereas the child may
have simply imitated this before, a picture can be given to enliven the
activity for the child: the child can help to bathe the china family: the
big daddy and mummy plates, the little boy and girl plates, all the plate
family gets a good bath. Similarly, fairy tales begin to be experienced by
the child much more deeply, whereas up until this age nature stories or
stories drawn from daily life are much more interesting for the child.
Passive experiences of formative activity were hitherto sufficient to
stimulate the child’s own formative forces. Now, however, this stimu-
lus is increasingly dependent upon the child living or creating out of
what is received by way of formative impulses. The imitative faculty
must now be nurtured and protected.
This is not to say that the child should be induced to imitate. By its
very nature, imitation must arise from within; it can be encouraged and
directed through the manner of what is or is not presented53 but should
not be forced. It should be kept in mind that the manner and speed with
which what has been received comes forth transformed varies widely
between children. The task is to make it possible for what is experienced
to be expressed in activity. This implies that outer stimulation must be
kept moderate in quantity. If the child goes from one attraction (or dis-
traction) to the next, there is never a time for the necessary free expres-
sion of what arises thereby in the child’s inner formative force activity,
for it becomes dammed up under the pressure of the continual stream
of new experiences.
Time for free play in an environment that the child can shape imagi-
natively should be balanced with times of positive formative influences.
This can include play outside, and indeed in all weathers; if the child
can come into creative, imaginative interaction with sun, wind, rain,
cold, and snow, this builds a tremendous capacity for creative interac-
tion with the many moods that the world will present him with in later
life.

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 Similarly, provision for free artistic expression should be balanced
with times when appropriate style and content can be imitated from an
adult. The receptivity for imaginative pictures opens up greatly at this
age. If given a sufficiently wide and rich variety of appropriate and im-
aginative experience in its environment, the child will truly ‘light up’
inwardly at this age. It is not primarily the outer experience but the
depth and richness of inner content which is important now: meaningful
work and expressive, descriptive language54 build the forces of the child in
these spheres. Through such experiences, the child begins to unfold an
independent life of imaginative play. Whereas her play remained more
of a direct imitation of experiences from the environment before, or was
dependent upon the guidance of older children or adults, her own im-
agination now begins to be a source of creative impulses for activities.
Imaginative stories such as fairy tales may now be brought. These
should be simple in nature, consisting largely of single imaginative pic-
tures.

Sixth Developmental Stage: Social Integration

True social life can now begin to develop.
Sociability is the ability to reach out to others
who are experienced as being different than
oneself. In the previous phases, all ‘socializing’
was mediated through a responsible adult or
an outer activity. Now the child begins to be able
to directly relate to others out of a social con-
sciousness.
The child now begins to become conscious of the rhythmic, order-
ing principle of its environment and being. Previously this realm of
rhythm and order (the musical quality of the world) worked directly,
formatively and unconsciously into the child’s being; now these ele-
ments begin to be consciously experienced and mastered. This leads to
a change in the child’s expressions in the world; the child begins to cre-

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ate not only out of the process of fantasy but also to create composition,
rhythm and order in her physical world. A variety of moods, lifestyles
and daily rhythms becomes a normal and healthy extension of the child’s
life and capable of being integrated into the child’s consciousness. Pat-
tern and rhythm appear in the child’s work and play.
Experiences of a breadth of such rhythms, moods and ordering quali-
ties leads to the child’s life organization becoming free from the organic
activity of its physical body. If the physical body’s influence is not over-
come at this time, a fixation on a particular pattern of activity or ways of
ordering the world will tend to arise. If the child’s environment is too
fixed in this sense (always fixed rules for games, a monotonous rhythm
of life or a lack of breathing between kinds of experiences), the child
will tend to remain dependent on the environment for a sense of order.
If the environment is too disordered, on the other hand, the child will
fail to incarnate properly into this sphere of its own being, and thus be
unable to properly differentiate order and disorder or discern rhythm
and composition in the world in the very broadest sense.

Upbringing for the four- to five-year-old child

The child can be given increasing scope to create little rhythmic parts
of her day. Just as a physical environment that she could freely rear-
range became important earlier, so it is with the fabric of her time now.
She can bring order and rhythm to her work and play now; scope for
this is important.
The child’s social integration was previously largely unconscious.
Common activity could have been important: if she felt a part of the
activity taking place, she felt integrated into the social milieu as well or
even when playing completely on her own, she often felt socially a part
of the larger context. True social interaction, sociability and an aware-
ness of the substance of social relations begin at this stage of develop-
ment.
Opportunities for social interaction begin to take on an importance
in themselves for the child. Times for play with similarly aged children

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may need to be arranged now (in large families a certain amount of this
will happen in the family naturally). At the same time, larger social con-
texts cease to be overwhelming, and the child begins to be able to con-
tribute to rather than only draw upon the social fabric. A kindergarten
(or similar provision) now begins to be of intrinsic value due to the ex-
periences which it can provide. The quality of the sensory environment,
the rhythmical quality of the daily and seasonal experiences, the activi-
ties provided, the role models met and the imaginative and creative
stimulus received are all extremely valuable aspects of a good kinder-
garten. These could all, in principle, be achieved at home by a suffi-
ciently talented and energetic parent55 but the range of social experi-
ences which a kindergarten can provide is extremely difficult to offer in
a home environment. (See below for a description of the kindergarten
environment.)
Social interactions can begin to enter into stories. An example might
be The Golden Goose, which describes three sons who go into the forest
(the last being the simpleton) and their relative success with the little
man they meet there.

Seventh Developmental Stage: Completion

The child now begins to perceive unity, ‘ge-
stalt’ and the wholeness of being itself. He thus
begins to comprehend the world as being made
up of complete entities – and to comprehend his
own wholeness in this sense as well. A sense of
completeness – of wanting to bring what he is
accomplishing to a proper conclusion – develops
for the first time. The child no longer solely expe-
riences the world as being in flux, as coming into being; he can now
experience it in its finished states or conditions, as well. An ability to
generate unified, complete and finished forms is found.
The skeletal forces (not the bony structure, but the forces underlying
this) are taken hold of at this time; these are experienced as a source of

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life and as a revelation of complete form by the young child.56 The expe-
rience of the whole physical body as an interconnected entity and of the
completed forms of objects leads to an expansion of practical capacities:
crafts and accomplishment in general become much more important in
the child’s life.

Upbringing for the five- to six-year-old child

The children become aware of the objective forms of the world and
seek to achieve a corresponding quality and completion in what they
do. An image of what they would like to create generally precedes and
is the stimulus for creative activity, whether in craft work or play. Thus,
it now becomes appropriate to show examples of what can be aimed at,
rather than simply demonstrating the activity itself.
A significant increase in practical capacity is generally experienced
at this age; the children can become true helpers in a much more sub-
stantial and systematic sense than before. More activities and creative
possibilities need to be provided now; these should still arise naturally
from life and contribute to the world around the child. Crafts activities
will still depend upon imitation, but a wide range of these will help to
develop fundamental skills in the physical world and a will that is crea-
tively directed outward. Tasks set also play an important role in stories
for the child of this age (for example, the miller’s daughter who must
spin the straw to gold).
Social life now needs to be given more form. In fact, the children
will themselves begin to create more form even in their play: hierar-
chies become apparent, rules are laid down, and so on. To meet this
need in the children, the social experience can begin to be more organ-
ized: games have a place now next to the songs and verses with move-
ment, finger games, and times for free play. The presence or absence of
order in general also becomes more clearly experienced by the child at
this time. A comprehensive sense of order to the day and to life in gen-
eral becomes more important for the children; if this is lacking, it can
affect their ability to order experience inwardly.

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REMARKS
The Evolution of Social Experience in the First Phase of Life
To summarize the evolution of the child’s social experience over
the course of early childhood:
Pregnancy: Social life is experienced in a shared physical
existence.
st
1 year: Social life is experienced through shared rhythms.
2nd year: Social life is experienced through shared consciousness
and language.
rd
3 year: Social life is explored through self-assertion.
4th year: Social life is found in imaginative play.
5th year: Social life is found in interpersonal interaction.
6th year: Social life is found in a clear social order.

Outlook
In the next phases of life, the life and consciousness organizations,
soul and spirit of the incarnating individuality will modify the physical
body considerably, often transforming what was built up in the first
phase of life or what remains from the inherited physical organization
in order to make a suitable vessel for themselves. The first stage of this
process occurs as the child’s life sheath begins to be transformed into
the life body, in the process of which it must overcome the physical
body and inherited form. This begins with the change of teeth.57

THE ROLE OF THE FORMATIVE FORCES IN THE FIRST PHASE OF LIFE

During the period while the child is still in the womb, astonishing
and decisive steps in the formation of the physical body are accom-
plished. After birth, this process continues, its pace slowly ebbing from
that of the embryological period until the physical body has achieved
the greater part of its development and growth by the end of early child-
hood.58

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 During early childhood, the child’s formative forces are working
directly into the child’s physical body to stimulate and direct the proc-
esses of growth and transformation which are occurring. This forma-
tive process takes place, of course, wholly outside of the child’s con-
scious awareness; this contrasts with the more conscious development
of the physical body (e.g., through practice and exercises) possible in
later childhood and adulthood. The need for the physical body to take
on its fundamental formation completely independently of the conscious
awareness or participation of the child is striking. All growth processes,
especially rapid ones, are accompanied with proportionate growth pains.
Were the child to be conscious of the formative and growth processes
active in its being, the suffering would be unimaginable. On the other
hand, the complex developmental processes of these first years required
to shape, for example, the kidney, central nervous system or venal-
arterial network could not be accomplished or even followed by human
consciousness. The contrast with what we are able to manage in later
years by way of conscious physical development – primarily limited to
the development of fine and gross muscular capacity – is blatant.
This extraordinary quality of fine detail required of the formative
process in the first years of life is only possible through the child’s forma-
tive forces being in a nearly complete state of unity with, and nearly
wholly devoted to building up, the physical body.59 The child’s forma-
tive force body is also not yet clearly differentiated from the formative
forces working in from the environment, environmental influences which
effectively unite with the child’s own formative forces. Through becom-
ing integrated into these, they exercise a significant role in the physical
development of the child, directly influencing the growth and develop-
ment of the physical body.
The formative environment thus affects the development of both
the creative-formative capacities and the physical body. From concep-
tion onwards, ongoing experiences of the formative activity of nature
and of the human being are central for the healthy development of the

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child in the early years and provide the basis for the later healthy func-
tioning of the adult in many realms.
The formative environment is exceptionally manysided. Various
formative influences in the child’s development will be examined here.

Nature
Such of nature’s formative activity as the child may experience in its
environment is taken up directly into and works with the child’s forma-
tive forces. Nature’s activities of growth, metamorphosis, expansion,
contraction, and so forth, are imitated and expressed in a free way; these
experiences develop into fundamental formative capacities which can
also be applied later in many realms of life.
Minerals (stones and crystals), plants and animals should all be
present. Various qualities of landscapes are important: hill, flatland and
valley; pond and stream; forest and meadow. By coming into natural
contact with all of these in various ways, the child’s life organization is
stimulated at various levels and in various qualities of its being.
A natural environment rich in experiences of nature’s life of growth,
metamorphosis and transformation can support the healthy develop-
ment of the physical body. Walking, playing and working (or just stand-
ing or sitting and experiencing) in such an environment brings forma-
tive forces that enrich and heal the child’s being. Such experiences should
be frequent and regular in early childhood, preferably on a daily basis.

Human Activity
All human formative activity in the physical world, i.e. all practical
work, brings formative forces that stimulate the child’s own formative
forces and activity. A young child experiences this activity as immedi-
ately as if it were his or her own, gaining facility and developing thereby.
Generally, the young child will take up the essential formative quality
of the original activity rather than attempting to achieve a similar outer
result.60

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 Experiences of practical activities linked with the ability to freely
practice the formative qualities thus experienced are one of the most
important developmental factors in the child’s early years. The forma-
tive capacities acquired in this experiential-imitative way are capable of
general, not particular application; the gestures underlying such activi-
ties as folding, grinding, cleaning, and so on can be applied later freely
transformed in many realms: practically, aesthetically, socially and in-
tellectually, for example.
The range of activities experienced through work and play is richest
when it includes all four of the archetypal elemental states: earth, water,
air and fire. These are implicit in many activities, but the separate stages
should be carefully and properly articulated and attended to if the chil-
dren are to fully experience the many unique formative gestures and
qualities that each activity offers.
Cooking allows the children to experience a wide range of such proc-
esses. Preparing bread, for example, requires milling the flour, mixing
the dough, kneading, and baking. Thereby the children meet the contri-
butions of solid, liquid, air and warmth to this process. The preparation
of other foods allows the children to experience analogous processes:
collecting, chopping, mixing, soaking, boiling or steaming, and so forth.
In each case, taking the simplest form of the ingredients as they stem
from nature right through to the finished meal gives an extraordinary
range of formative experiences. This also integrates the children’s expe-
riences of nature and the human world. This experience of the world as
a seamless unity is one of the greatest gifts which a healthy upbringing
can offer in this phase of life.
Cleaning offers similar cycles of experience. If it is clothes that are
cleaned, this ranges from heating the water (an unfortunately rare ex-
perience), washing and rinsing the cloth, hanging and drying in the air
(or sun) and folding. Fire, water, earth and air are all included here. For
dishes to be cleaned, they can be washed, dried and stacked; surfaces
(tables, floors, windows) can be swept, wiped or mopped and aired;

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and so forth. The point is to allow each stage and element of the process
to be a distinct experience. It should be noted that such experiential-
imitative formative influences are not or only minimally provided by
the activities offered through ‘educational toys’ (and this includes the
Montessori early years’ materials). A mechanical exercise of skills that
provides a narrow channel within which the child may repeat a stand-
ard repertoire of gestures does not offer an experience of the formative
world. The same applies, of course, to electronic and computer games,
whether educationally intended or not. Toys can and should be the tools
used by the child to express activity, not the stimulus for the child’s ac-
tivity.61 In this sense, they should be flexible enough to be freely trans-
formed and made use of in many ways by the child. In this way, capaci-
ties are developed – capacities which can grow, develop and transform
with time – rather than physically oriented patterns of accomplishment
trained.

Cultivating the Earth

Man’s practical activity and nature’s formative activity join together
in the cultivation of the earth: gardening, farming, and forestry. Quar-
rying forms a special area here; every child has a deep relation to dig-
ging into the earth, e.g. in sand, mud or clay. Activities in nature give
the child the chance to engage in practical work and to experience na-
ture simultaneously. They thus provide central formative experiences.
Many modern children (and adults!) have no idea of the origin or
nature of the world that surrounds them. All of the materials we use
(for food, clothing, shelter, and so forth) are the result of human beings
cultivating, harvesting and preparing nature’s resources. Experiences
of whole cycles of cultivation, harvest, preparation and use stimulate a
deeper experience and comprehension of the essential unity of the en-
vironment in which we live.
The cultivation of nature can include both gardening and even the
care of simple farm animals (though the latter may well present both

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legal and practical challenges in a formal care environment). Animals
should be experienced in an environment that is both natural and healthy
for them; in cages indoors, for examples, they are experienced in a dis-
tortion of their natural relationship to their environment. A similar case
can be made for providing plants with a natural setting.
For gardening, the activities include digging the bed (to prepare it),
raking it smooth, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting and clearing.
From trees, fruit can be gathered, leaves raked and piled, branches gath-
ered and burnt. Bushes can be trimmed, compost spread and so on. Ex-
periences of the whole cycle of growth offer the widest range of forma-
tive activities and the most complete awareness of the natural cycle. A
variety of flowers, produce, herbs and useful plants can be raised. These
will then require further processes of preparation (cleaning, cooking,
and so forth).
Farming offers another range of possibilities: feeding, milking, clean-
ing the stables, bringing the animals to pasture and back to the barn.
Traditional cultivation of corn or hayfields offers ploughing, sowing,
reaping (mowing), turning, drying, stacking and (in the case of grain)
threshing and milling. Most of these activities can be cultivated on a
surprisingly small scale.
For the garden itself, both wild and cultivated areas have their own
unique contributions to make. If wild areas cannot be left, at least wild
flowers may be encouraged in beds and lawns. A balance between trees,
bushes, perennials, annual plants and (preferably meadow-like) lawn
offers a range of experiences of nature. There should be the possibility
for children to play normally in the natural environment; a certain care
for the arrangement and protection of more fragile areas is thus required.
The garden has a number of goals to fulfill for the young child:

• Does it offer experiences of the seasons? Are there plants that

grow, flowers that bloom and fruits that ripen throughout the
year (in so far as this is possible given the climate)? At the same

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 time, can spring’s vital impulse, summer’s fullness, autumn’s rip-
ening and transformation as well as winter’s quiet gathering come
to expression?

• Connected with this, what activities can the garden offer the young
child? Are there bulbs or seeds to be planted, beds to be weeded,
fruits to be gathered and leaves to be raked?

• What can be grown in the garden that can come into the practical
household work: both produce – e.g. fruits, grains, seeds (i.e. sun-
flower) or herbs for tisanes – and crafts materials – e.g. dye plants,
willow or raffia for weaving or branches for cutting and carving

• Finally, do the seasonal experience, activities and produce or crafts

materials relate to and support the celebration of the festivals of
the year?

Nature’s Rhythms
Rhythm is an expression of formative forces working in time. Na-
ture’s rhythms include those of the day (sunrise-morning-high noon-
afternoon-sunset-evening-night), of the week, of the month (through
the waxing and waning of the moon) and the year (through the sea-
sons). Experiences of all of these cosmic rhythms have a creative, up-
building effect on the human formative body. However, modern life is
becoming more and more isolated from these rhythms. How often do
we notice the shifting light of the day, the qualities of the days of the
week, the moon’s cyclic influence or even the seasons of the year? For
the child such experiences are not a luxury; they are necessary in order
to establish a healthy formative sheath.
Nature’s rhythms can be experienced in various ways. Activities and
meals, for example, can be chosen to correspond to the character of the
time of day, the day of the week, the cycle of the month and/or the
season of the year. The rhythm of the day includes the awakening of

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daybreak, morning’s ready activity, the fullness of midday, the comple-
tion of afternoon, evening’s quiet and reflective departure. Each day
also has its quality: Monday, concentrated potential; Tuesday, expres-
sive energy; Wednesday, lively movement; Thursday, serene accomplish-
ment; Friday, artistic creativity; Saturday, reflection; Sunday, unifying
balance. Mood changes through the month: new moon, beginnings; wax-
ing moon, growth and activity; full moon, openness to the influences of
the environment; waning moon, inwardness, seeking a new impulse.
The seasons of the year have character too: Spring, new life; Summer,
growth and fullness; Autumn, ripening and transformation (the leaves
turning); Winter, hidden potential.

Human Rhythms
Human rhythms have an equal influence on the young child. A rhyth-
mic pattern to the day begins with sleeping and feeding for the baby;
later, more and more of the day can take on a rhythmic character, e.g.,
brush teeth, breakfast, wash up, prepare lunch, grace or blessing, lunch,
rest, play outside, clean hands, supper, story, prepare for bed, bedtime
prayer, sleep. Such a regularly repeated schedule becomes a formative
influence. The rhythm of the day can include times of quiet and times of
activity, outside and inside times, times of work and times of play; times
of structured receiving (hearing stories or taking part in songs, move-
ment or finger games) and times of giving to or exploring the world in
free play. If there is a regular rhythm to each day that includes all of
these experiences, the formative forces of the child are stimulated to the
fullest.
Rhythms within activities also bring such a formative influence. Most
work was once accomplished through such rhythmic activity: milking,
mowing, blacksmithing, shoemaking, and so forth. Other rhythmic ac-
tivities included dances and children’s games. Such experiences are rare
now; all modern activities, from adults’ work and leisure to children’s
games, have for the most part become either mechanical (especially
where machines are involved) or diffuse and arrhythmic. To bring ac-

96
tivities in a rhythmic way is, however, important for the child. The tra-
ditional patterns of rhythmic work can be renewed, for example by hav-
ing little work songs to accompany each kind of activity.
Both the larger rhythms of activities related to the courses of the
day, week, month and year and smaller rhythms within these activities
stimulate the child’s formative activity and work directly into the physi-
ology of breathing, circulation and general organ activity.

The Festivals
The festivals of the year unite cosmic and human rhythms; each cel-
ebration takes place at the time of a particular configuration of the heav-
ens and is expressed through a special rhythm of human activity. Reu-
niting with the experience of nature which gives rise to the festival cul-
tivates the child’s formative experience of time and gives a sense of the
unity with the temporal environment which can be established only in
this way in early childhood. At the same time, the sacral and commu-
nity aspects of the festivals can be given meaningful expression through
appropriate activities and experiences.
Finding an expression of each festival that unites the mood of na-
ture with the human and sacral experience and yet is fully poured into
a mold appropriate for young children is a special task. Finding a sen-
sory experience of the inner meaning of each festival is helpful for young
children. Special activities and foods, but also a special environment
expressive of the mood of the festival (e.g. celebrating outside with flow-
ers for summer festivals but in a darkened room with candles for winter
festivals) are central to the child’s experience.

Weather
Nature’s formative forces are also experienced through the weath-
er’s metamorphoses between clear, cloudy, rain, snow and hail; pleas-
ant, cold and hot; calm, breezy, windy and storm. The weather has a
direct influence on the young child’s mood: cranky with wind, wild
before snow, gay with the sun. This formative activity occurs in a realm

97
between the grand, unchanging cosmic rhythms of time and the earthly
forces of growth and metamorphosis revealed in plants, trees, fish, birds
and the (land) animals: in the atmosphere.
After the first year of life (when children still need protection from
the elements), experiences of the whole range of nature’s activities bring
differentiation and vitality into the child’s formative organization. Chil-
dren must be shown how to meet the weather. This includes learning to
dress properly for sun (sun hats and cool clothing), rain (raincoats, boots
and hats), cold (warm clothes in layers, hats, scarves and mittens) and
snow.

Art
The human being applies himself formatively through cultural ac-
tivities. Dynamic elements such as movement, speech and song as well
as visual elements such as the architectural environment, furniture, gar-
ments, cloths and coverings, sculptures and paintings invigorate and
harmonize the child’s formative forces.
The forms of visual elements should be expressive of inner life and
movement, i.e. drawn from the formative world. The artistic influence
of simple songs, verses and stories, especially when united with move-
ment expressive of the character of the text or song, bring life, differen-
tiation and character into the child’s formative organization. Culture
has as much range of character and as much importance as a formative
influence in the child’s life as the weather.

Cultivating Social Capacities

Yet another formative influence is the cultivation of social capaci-
ties. Whether with one child or a group, bringing social impulses to the
young child requires enormous formative forces and imagination of the
adult. It implies bringing an artistic influence into the social sphere, shap-
ing this into a dynamic and harmonious form. This can range from bring-
ing out a basket of building materials when children are unable to find

98
creative modes of interacting together to informing a table of children
that the delicious rolls want to hear their grace sung before they hop out
of the basket onto the waiting plates. Experience with the weather is of
great assistance here; like the weather, that which is met with in social
life is often less to be changed or predicted than to be properly prepared
for and creatively engaged with. In a certain way, social life thus com-
bines nature’s weather with human art.
All of the aforementioned formative influences will be of great as-
sistance here: practical activities, nature experiences, cultivating the gar-
den, rhythms of nature, rhythms of activity, the festivals, the weather
and aspects of the cultural life. For example, the desired mood can often
be set for the young child simply through preparing the room accord-
ingly or by bringing an appropriate song, verse or little story. Conven-
tional social forms (manners, etiquette) will be of use here in the early
stages, but later on the child should be helped to develop imaginative
capacities that can also respond to new social situations. Experiences of
weather and artistic experiences (e.g. stories) are particularly effective
here. Acquiring such social capacities stimulates the child’s formative
organization to be active in the highest levels of its being.

Summary
The formative activity of the environment stimulates a correspond-
ing activity in the young child’s formative organization. This formative
organization or life body works directly into the physical body, shaping
the latter and bringing it into activity. The healthy condition and growth
of the young child’s physical body thus depends upon a healthy forma-
tive environment.
Formative activities can be differentiated on the basis of what realm
they take place in:

• Those that shape space:

Nature’s growth and metamorphosis

99
 Work activities and
Gardening, farming, etc. (work in nature)

• Those that shape time:

Nature’s rhythms
Work rhythms and
Festivals
• Those that shape consciousness:
Weather
Art and
Cultivating the social life

and on the basis of their origin in nature, human existence or cultural

life. (The latter implies a sacral nature.)

Formative Experiences in Early Childhood

Realm: Nature Human Cultural

Expression in:

Space Experiencing nature Practical work Gardening

Time Nature’s rhythms Rhythms of work Festivals

Consciousness Weather Artistic work The social

realm

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Metamorphic Imitation
Every realm of the young child’s being is still unified with the child’s
physical organization and simultaneously receptive to its environment.
Thus, not only the formative environment but expressions of soul, ego
activity and the spiritual environment also affect the child’s physical
existence. The formative forces are most closely bound up with the physi-
cal body, and thus have a more powerful and more obvious effect on
the child’s being than do the higher influences from the environment.
Though the effects of these higher realms may be subtler, they are no
less significant for the child’s development.
The formative effects of all of these influences are expressed in a
kind of metamorphic imitation. In the first few years, the child imitates
in a direct, literal and obvious fashion. With the individualization typi-
cal of the two- to three-year-old child, a capacity to draw back from
outward imitation develops. The environment’s formative influence con-
tinues to work into the child’s formative organization, nonetheless, and
in the second half of early childhood this is expressed in a progressively
thorough and imaginative metamorphosis of what is experienced.
Imitation thus becomes ever less literal over the course of early child-
hood. In other words, imitation takes place on the level of form which
the physical body has achieved. Initially, imitation takes place through
the physical being of the child being formed in imitation of the moth-
er’s being enveloping it and of the sensory environment of the womb.
The imitation of gesture follows in the first year after birth; of concept,
feeling or will in the next; of individuality in the third year after birth; of
the imagination or creative principle that lies behind the outer actions
in the fourth year, and so on.
Metamorphic imitation is actually the effective principle out of which
the young child takes up his or her environment. It is thus the effective
principle on which the upbringing of young children can be based. The
moral, religious and spiritual atmosphere surrounding the child, the
individualities with whom the child comes into contact, the conditions

101
of consciousness and expressions of soul in the child’s environment, the
work and activities which the child experiences (including nature’s
formative activity) and the physical environment are not only imitated
by the child in his own behavior and expressions in direct or metamor-
phosed fashion, but even form his physical being and constitution.
The upbringing of the child is the result of the formative effects of
all of these aspects of the environment meeting the child’s spiritual be-
ing and the inherited constitution. The primary task of those entrusted
with the care of young children is to shape the environment on all levels
so that the formative effects on the child are the desired ones. An aware-
ness of and receptivity to the child’s spiritual individuality and a con-
sciousness of and care for the inherited constitution are prerequisites
for accomplishing this task successfully. Though we will briefly return
to the requisite consciousness of the child’s spiritual individuality in
the conclusion of this book, a deeper exploration of this or of the inher-
ited constitution would go beyond the scope of this book.

The Environment of Early Childhood

Everything that finds an expression in the sense world is compre-
hensible to the young child. In the environment of early childhood, then,
everything should be given a sense-perceptible form.62 The child expe-
riences the integrated wholeness of life. This can find its expression in
the most various ways, e.g. the season of the year and even the day of
the week becoming visible in the table arrangement in the activities and
in the meal served.
The senses should be stimulated not by the strength but by the qual-
ity of the sensory impressions. A rich formative environment is health
giving and fundamental. The environment should provide an atmos-
phere of certainty, of clarity and of all-pervading goodness for the chil-
dren.
Art plays an important role in the early years. In painting (using
transparent media), modelling (using soft materials) and house build-

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ing (using easily put together and taken apart elements), the children
exercise creative, formative capacities. Experiences of movement, verses
and songs are taken up and give richness of gesture and soul expression
as well as forming the basis for the study of language and number to
build upon in later years.
Time is irrelevant in the world of early childhood; the young child
lives in the eternal ‘now’. Stories should be told as a unity and may be
repeated verbatim each day for an extended period (building the verbal
memory); a puppet show is presented as a single unified tableau, with
nothing happening hidden from view.
From the description of the role of imitation in early childhood, it is
clear that the adults responsible for young children do not have the task
of teaching them. Instead, their task is to provide an appropriate envi-
ronment and an example of creative engagement in and transformation
of this environment in a way that is suitable to be imitated. The most
effective way of raising a young child is not to direct her, but to be an
example for her. ‘Do what I do, not what I say’ is the unconscious maxim
which the young child follows; yet more deeply, ‘Be(come) what I am.’
The child’s physical body is in the process of becoming, and the whole
environment influences this process. It is worth reflecting on the de-
tailed description of the effects of the environment’s formative forces
given in an earlier section of this book with this reality in mind, and to
reflect as well on the application of this principle to the conditions of
soul, the individualities and the religious, moral and spiritual environ-
ment which surround the child.

A Note on Materials and Objects for Use in the

Early Years’ Environment
Many practical consequences can be drawn from the above. One of
these lies in the choice of materials for the child’s environment. In all
that is drawn from nature, a still living connection with the formative
force world can be experienced in the physical substance, while the deeds

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of creative formative forces can be experienced in the form given by
nature or human work.
On the other hand, synthetic materials originate from the destruc-
tion of the organic origin of matter and its reconstitution in a new (chemi-
cal) substance in which no elements of the original formative process
remain. Synthetic materials are built up solely through technological
manipulation without recourse to the world of formative forces. They
are thus ‘negative space’ in the formative force world. Matter of natural
origin does not fill out all of the physical space which it seems to oc-
cupy; the negative space of the formative forces is interwoven with the
physical material. The inner structure of natural materials expresses this
interweaving. Synthetic materials, on the other hand, fully occupy space;
where natural materials ‘breathe’ with their environment synthetic ma-
terials are impenetrable.
There is a second consideration. In any purely mechanical construc-
tion the form of the construction has arisen without any influence from
the world of formative forces; only the application of the laws of the
physical world, applied through physical means, determine such con-
structions. Thus, from the simplest mechanical device up to the most
complicated technology, no formative influence arises through the ex-
perience of such devices. (For the adult, this is not in itself problematic;
in a certain sense, a realm of freedom is granted through an object not
exerting a formative influence.)63 This lack can be made good by form-
ing such devices in an artistic way. All technology is a shaping of the
physical world into a form which is an application of the laws of this
(the physical) world. All true art is an expression of principles of a higher
world and results in an aspect of the physical world being shaped into a
form that corresponds to and is drawn from the living qualities of the
formative world.64 Thus, in so far as a mechanical device unites in its
form principles drawn from the physical world with those of the forma-
tive world, the forces of the latter world are woven into the mechanism.

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Artistic forms thus work formatively in an analogous way to natural
forms; they offer experiences of the world of formative forces linked
with the physical world, build up the formative force organization and
bring health to the physical body of the young child. (For the adult, art
and nature have a similarly refreshing effect on the formative force body,
but as this is less deeply connected with the physical body, the effects
go correspondingly less deeply. They are nonetheless clearly percepti-
ble and health giving.)
Pure art is found where only the formative forces have been consid-
ered in shaping a form, where the physical expression has been made
over into a complete image of the formative world. Applied art is found
where both formative forces and physical forces have found expression
in the form of the construction. Technology is found where only the
physical forces are determinate. Whereas technology is experienced as
a formative vacuum, drawing out the life forces, art and nature work
positively and formatively on the young child.
Both naturally and artistically formed objects can be brought into
the children’s play. Free experiences in nature and with natural objects
and substances form the basis for the natural sciences to build upon
later.

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 Chapter V

THE SECOND PHASE OF LIFE: THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL YEARS

MEMORY AND THINKING

During early childhood, the formative force organization is still in-
timately bound up with the formation and development of the physical
body and thus to sense experience. It is due to the life organization be-
ing submerged in the physical body that memory and thinking are rather
effervescent in character in the early years; it is as if the impressions
which come to expression here arise unexpectedly from invisible depths
and disappear equally unexpectedly and mysteriously. In these years
memory is still linked to sense perceptions: an object seen or a taste will
set off a memory of the last time this was seen or tasted. During this
phase of life, memory – as well as thinking, which at this time is largely
a correlation of sense experience – thus remain significantly dependent
upon the conditions and experiences of the physical body. In later life,
this occurs only in exceptional cases of physical or mental illness (e.g.,
feverish conditions).65
The forms in which memory and thinking are perceived in physi-
cally mediated consciousness are dependent upon the mediating sense
organs: there are pictorial, musical and verbal memory and thought.
When these capacities are mediated by senses such as warmth, smell or
taste, they result in experiences that play a large role in social encoun-
ters, but the resulting perceptions are less clearly experienced by our
daily consciousness. Memory and thinking mediated by still more un-
consciously experienced senses such as balance, life and movement are
extremely significant for our lives, for much of our habitual existence is
dependent upon the exercise of these capacities.

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 With the conclusion of the physical body’s primary developmental
phase, the child’s formative organization begins to develop independ-
ently of, but still integrated into the physical body. (The first year of this
new phase of development is devoted to establishing this free linkage
between the two organizations; this is described further in the follow-
ing chapters.)
The formative organization experiences that which takes place in
the formative world. This world reveals itself in outer experience through
that which is rhythmic in character or which undergoes metamorpho-
sis, among other ways.66
New faculties of memory and understanding develop for the child
through the establishment of an independent formative organization
capable of perceiving in these realms. Memory can now work through
this organization and thus can begin to take up and recall that which
manifests rhythmically in time, whether this is the cycle of the year,
weekly or daily impressions, the rhythmic patterns of movement, song
or verse. The rhythms of recurrent experience are impressed upon the
formative organization and thus may be recalled later. That which has
(or is given) a rhythmic character and/or is taken in through rhythmic
practice is thus most easily remembered in this phase of life. Because
the child now experiences the rhythmic passage of time, a rhythmic
quality of expression may also now be achieved (e.g. in spoken work or
in musical or artistic work).
Rhythm is but one portal to the formative organization. Metamor-
phosis is a second. The formative organization has the capacity to trans-
form impressions or images according to their inner laws, i.e. according
to a potential for metamorphosis inherent in the image or impression
itself. The child thus now develops the capacity to explore the meta-
morphoses inherent in a representation or idea. (These metamorphoses
are analogous to but not identical with dream experience. They differ in
that the child is simultaneously aware of the sensory world and of the
interconnections between the image and the outer world of sense expe-

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rience.67) Such explorations take the form of an image-based thinking
that allows the child to explore the ramifications of impressions or ideas
through exploring their potential metamorphoses.
Material learned through rhythmic practice or which appeals to the
child’s image building faculty exercises and develops the formative force
organization, whereas material learned in isolation, in an abstract form
or through rhythmless repetition is empty of formative content. When
abstractions or content of too fixed a character are to be learned, the
formative organization must take hold of something that it actually can
barely experience. This has a sclerotic effect upon and ultimately weak-
ens the formative forces. Rhythm and metamorphic, image-based think-
ing are thus the foundation of healthy learning processes during this
phase of life.
It should be noted that rote memory (recalling literal facts: how large
is the North Polar ice cap?), abstract thinking (applying fixed concepts:
find the subject of this sentence) and representational image building (sub-
stituting fixed images: draw an angel) are simply particular – and par-
ticularly sterile – forms of the more general and flexible capacities capa-
ble of developing in this phase of life.68 Many educational systems draw
primarily upon rote and representation. These do not make use of the
faculties of the formative force organization referred to above, however,
but result from – and in – the child’s formative forces accommodating
themselves to the physical body and thereby being prevented from un-
folding their own inherent capacities. It is as if a gifted sculptor were to
be set to work hewing uniform stone blocks; the true capacities of
memory and thinking are wasted here.69 Such capacities can only un-
fold gradually; if allowed to do so, they naturally become capable of rote
and representation, i.e. of accommodating to the laws of the physical
body, by the close of this phase of life. A capacity for rote, abstraction
and representation should be the last of the many fruits of the develop-
ing memory and image based thinking, developing at the transition to a
new phase of life, not their sole possible expression.

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DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES (II): THE LIFE ORGANIZATION
The form of the life and rhythmic organization is built up from be-
low upwards, starting with its foundations in the physical body and
under the influence of successively higher levels of being. In contrast,
the child’s consciousness as experienced through this organization be-
gins with the broadest state of intuitive unity with its environment and
incarnates into an ever narrower and more specific condition, ending
with a clear awareness of the physical world. The path of consciousness
recapitulates the descent through the realms of spiritual existence (as
described in the earlier chapter “The Descent out of the Spiritual
World,”). In the following, before each description of a stage of devel-
opment, the corresponding stage of the spiritual path will therefore be
briefly summarized. (These summaries appear in italics.)

First Stage of Development: Transition

(6-7 year old child)
The starting point of incarnation for a human
being is found at the mid-point of his existence be-
tween death and a new birth in the sphere of moral
intuition. Here, in the highest spiritual world acces-
sible to human experience, beings are experienced in
their essential quality as being, while the ordering of
their interrelations appears in an absolute clarity
analogous to that which we see in the world of the
crystals. In the spiritual world of intuition, however, these interrelations are
ordered by an absolute spiritual morality – at this level, spirituality and mo-
rality are identical while in the physical world of the crystals it is the absolute-
ness of the physical laws of the mineral world which determines the form. Be-
ing is experienced in its eternal aspect here; it is a realm that precedes time and
evolution.
During this phase of and especially during this first year of the life
organization’s development, the incarnating life sheath must be woven

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into the already established physical body. The physical body must be
adapted to the demands of the newly independent life organization. An
anchoring point for this organization has already been established in
the child’s physical body through the life processes of the organs. Espe-
cially this aspect of the physical body needs to be transformed to enable
the life organization and the physical body to interweave at this point
where they should be jointly active.
The physical body undergoes a subtle qualitative transformation
during this stage of development, growing closer to and thereby be-
coming a more adequate instrument for the formative forces of the or-
ganization of life and growth. The child’s formative forces must there-
fore remain devoted to work on the physical body during this transi-
tional year, and are not yet available for such demands as formal learn-
ing make.
Healthy thinking and memory do not arise as a result of or manifest
in the body’s organic activity. They are, however, capable of imprinting
themselves into the bodily processes and of orienting themselves on
physical experiences.
If the organization of life and growth is inadequately integrated into
the physical body at this critical stage, the capacities that depend upon
this organization’s formative forces (that is, the child’s thinking and
memory) remain inadequately related to the physical world. In this case,
the child’s thinking and memory would be insufficiently grounded in
outer reality. If, on the other hand, the formative force body were to
become too fixed in and thereby dominated by the physical body, the
formative capacities would remain excessively dependent upon the
physical organism. In this case, thoughts and memories would be too
connected with organic processes, arising as a result of these and mani-
festing through them. Both of these conditions are abnormal.
This year thus has the character of a transition year. The actual de-
velopment characteristic of the independent formative organization is
not yet ready to begin; the previous phase of life’s development has

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concluded. In this year, a transformation of the child’s relationship to
the physical world prepares the way for the formative organization’s
development proper.

Kindergarten for the six-year old child: Methodology

Experiential, contextual, informal learning gives the essential basis
out of which elements that will later be used in formal learning can now
be presented in image-rich, life-relevant contexts. This requires neither
abstractions nor an artificially created learning situation, but only a range
of experience and practical awareness.
If a child has never woken up in wonder to the awareness of a blue-
tit or to three-ness, animal studies and number work can have no essen-
tial meaning for him or her. Through experiences of such elements and
their cultural expressions in picture, song and verse, the world of the
child is enriched in this year, when the inner world of image and the
outer world of image are still united in an immediacy of experience that
will soon fade.
Experiences of all kinds of formative activity (see the earlier chapter
on formative activity) give equally essential building blocks for faculties
of learning. Whoever has experienced the formative activities of folding
and milling will be able to think with these capacities as well: precise
combinatorial and thorough analytical skills are the result of the appli-
cation of the same formative activities to the conceptual realm as are
applied to cloth and grain in the outer realm here.
The difference between the pedagogical task of the previous years
and of this year lies in the new application of formative experience. Pre-
viously, the formative body was submerged in the physical body. The
year by year, ever-expanding range of experiences described above70
developed a foundation for all the realms of subsequent experience. Now,
experience of the formative world establishes the building blocks for
the formative capacities themselves. Images and formative activities ex-
perienced now are not absorbed into the physical body’s form, but link

111
the formative body and the physical body through a common vocabu-
lary. The fuller range of common experiences established in this year,
the freer will be the future cooperation between these two bodies. Where
such links are not established, either the physical body will carry out its
tasks without the participation of the life forces, i.e. mechanically, or the
life body will engage in its tasks without the physical body being able
to follow its movement. The latter situation results in thoughts and in-
ner activity remaining subconscious or inarticulate.

Kindergarten for the older child

What is (in a Waldorf school) normally the child’s final year of kin-
dergarten has a transitional character. The initial process of forming the
physical body has gone through an entire cycle of development. Now a
process of transformation takes place in what has already been devel-
oped under the influence of the incarnating life organization. It becomes
less important to give the fundamental environmental experiences that
the child needed for the incarnation of the physical body and more im-
portant to give the child opportunities to transform the physical world.
One way that this can be accomplished is through craft work, for
example through simple woodwork or handwork projects. In so far as
possible, these should still begin from the material’s natural origin and
carry right through to a finished project, thus offering an overview of
the whole series of processes required to achieve a given end. The chil-
dren will also seek to accomplish transformations of the world in their
free play, often through larger, more ambitious projects (e.g. digging a
pond in the garden or building a tree house). They are seeking to achieve
a fundamental rearrangement of the physical world to make room for a
new dynamic of life.
The child has a freer relationship to and more of an overview of the
physical world’s rhythms and of time. He or she begins to be able – and
usually to want – to play a part in shaping these rhythms. Children of
this age no longer require a direct example to imitate and can thus be

112
called upon to be independently responsible in areas of life with which
they are already familiar. They will often undertake caring for younger
children, tidying up, cooking or building, for example, on their own
initiative and without asking for help. Though the class may still be
treated as a unity, it is to be expected that children of this age will be
exercising increasing initiative. Giving scope for this within a highly
formed environment encourages the free development of the life body
in healthy connection with the physical body.
Nature stories and fairy tales can begin to include transformations.71
The Grimms’ story Mother Holle is appropriate for this age, for example.

Second Stage of Development: Rhythmic Form Development

(The 7-8 year old child)
The next spiritual world to be passed through
as the human being descends towards an existence
on earth is the world of inspiration, a world where
spiritual beings unite the unfolding revelation of
their being in a complex, evolving harmony (the
harmony of the spheres). Time and evolution now
begin. All development and evolution, including
the archetypes of the plant world and the life forces,
derive from this realm.
A large part of the formative forces are finally now freed from the
task of providing for the fundamental development and transforma-
tion of the physical body (a portion is still needed for the ongoing main-
tenance and growth of the physical organism). These forces can now be
applied to the outer world, where they are able to remold, transform
and internalize experiences through memory and image-based think-
ing. These capacities enable both a delving down into the physical body,
imprinting it through their formative activity, and a rising up to receive
new formative impulses from the sheath of consciousness provided by
the environment and by the higher spiritual sheaths. This alternating of

113
in-breath (from the surrounding sheath of consciousness) and out-breath
(into the physical body) remains characteristic for the rest of this phase
of development.
It is important to realize that the capacities of memory and thinking
are experienced by the child as mediating factors, not as static entities, in
these middle years of childhood. The content of these is inherently flex-
ible and metamorphic.
External demands such as formal learning presents can now begin
to be made on these capacities without drawing away that which is es-
sential for the healthy formation of the physical body and for the proper
integration of the life organization into its physical vessel. This is the
appropriate time for the entry into the first school year.72

First Grade: Methodology

All of education is oriented towards learning about reality of one
kind or another. The expressive qualities present in the elements of vari-
ous levels of reality are now appropriately explored in the most mani-
fold ways.
Rhythm is a keynote of the year, and should pervade all of the chil-
dren’s classroom experience. The children are brought into rhythmic
movement boththrough games, songs and poems, and through a rhyth-
mic alternation between the presentation of material by the teacher, prac-
tice periods and individual work. Learning takes place through the child
making a rhythmic contribution to the whole group.

First Grade: Curriculum

The first stage of formal learning is largely involved with becoming
familiar with conventional symbolic representations. Writing, reading
and number work, for example, depend upon learning such represen-
tations. The origin of such symbols is as depictions of actual beings of
the natural or spiritual world.
Writing is introduced as a visual depiction of the oral language. Each
sound of our language is represented by a particular visual form which

114
is (or was originally) related to both its auditory and inner character.
This relationship comes to expression in the words in which the sound
appears: S in swan or snake, B in baby or basket, and so forth. Initially,
images in which such sounds come to expression (e.g. the swan or bas-
ket) can be introduced and explored; the simpler and more symbolic-
abstract visual forms of the letters used in our present written language
can then be derived from these images. The unified experience of sound,
visual image and meaning which stood at the origin of all written lan-
guage (the hieroglyphs) thus becomes the children’s entry to learning
the sounds, visual images and meaning of our present language.
The children can practice speaking through artistically constructed
verses. These can be connected to the learning content, stories told, and
so forth. They may initially emphasize single sounds and can gradually
become more and more challenging. In speech, experiences of the vari-
ous rhythms are also important. Children should experience such verse
forms as the iamb, trochee, and anapaest, walking and speaking verses
and singing songs using these rhythms. Content brought in one lesson
or one part of a lesson should ideally be experienced by the children as
a metamorphosis or extension of that brought in another lesson or an-
other part of the lesson.
The visual form, numeric quantity and character of the numbers
were also originally all experienced as a unity. For the children now,
inner experiences of unity, duality, trinity, and so forth, can first be awak-
ened and explored. The visual forms of at least the simpler numbers are
generally related to the numbers’ qualities, for example:

__
| one __ three
__
__
__ two __ four

Numeric processes can be introduced in a similar way, first as activi-

ties (of corresponding beings: the patient gatherer, the sympathetic giver
or sad loser, the restless multiplier and the fair, exact divider).73 These

115
then flow into the visual images and the practise of addition, subtrac-
tion, multiplication and division, culminating in the written forms of
number problems.
The formal study of nature (drawing principally on elements found
in the local surroundings and with which the children should have be-
come familiar in the preceding year) begins. It is not yet appropriate for
this study to have a theoretical character, nor should it be an attempt to
represent precisely the outer forms found in the natural world. For the
child of this age, all of nature is still experienced as ensouled. The be-
ings of creation express and reveal themselves in mutual conversation.
Stories which reveal the qualities expressive of these different beings of
nature should be brought forward in imaginative pictures that bring
out such qualities, these parallel qualities that come to expression in the
human being (e.g. the shy violet, the radiant sunflower). The living at-
mosphere of the earth should also be woven into such stories through
elements such as the sun, clouds, winds and rain.
The children naturally experience that all of being is conversing to-
gether. Out of a unified experience of the inner characters of stones,
plants or animals and their outer expressions, nature’s beings can be
explored. These beings remain connected to an outer and inner context,
i.e. embedded both in their natural environment and their characteris-
tic qualities, both of which can come to expression through story or
image.
The children are now experiencing a world which enters into both
time and development, and is spiritually one step closer to the familiar
human world. Tales can be brought to the first grade that evolve and
develop in both plot and character; this differentiates them from the
static, archetypal situation of the kindergarten fairy tale.74
In painting, the effects of the colors can be explored, first alone and
pure, then in various combinations. Simple stories (e.g. about how the
red gave the yellow courage) can motivate such color explorations, or
the soul image of a fairy tale can be painted (a pure gold can be used to

116
represent the princess, a dark blue the dragon holding her in, a strong
red the prince seeking to save her).
Drawing will begin with simple expressions of stories (e.g. the sun
in the sky) to develop technique and a rhythmic style; this can then
become progressively richer in content and character. Drawings can be
approached as an expression of a soul-imbued reality; the quality of the
color and form employed here is intimately related to and determined
by the soul experience of the child. It belongs to the cultivation of inner
and outer experience to work out of pure colors, and not to muddy these,
and to use areas of color rather than solely lines or outlines.75 The result
can be cultivated as a kind of drawn painting.
Line drawing can be practiced as a separate, rhythmic discipline to
explore how movement results in form. This can begin with the most
basic elements of form, the straight line and the curve, and extend these
through various rhythmic patterns and metamorphoses into a larger
form language. In modelling, the polar character of the concave and
convex form should be explored first, deepening these through meta-
morphosis and rhythmic development.
In music, singing in unison in the children’s range should be culti-
vated. Simple instruments can be brought, and various pentatonic ranges
and simple rhythms explored.
In eurythmy, rhythmic movement is emphasized. Experiences of
breathing movement through contraction and expansion are appropri-
ate.76 These can be metamorphosed freely and rhythmically according
to the verses and music accompanying the movement. Simple forms
and rhythms can be practiced (circles, squares, figures of eight). The
sounds should all be introduced.
Artistic experiences should integrate soul and outer experiences. For
example, tasks for form drawing and modelling can best be brought
through an imaginative introduction, a story or image.
This is the ideal time of life for introducing foreign languages. The
child is still capable of imitating the sounds, rhythms and character of

117
these languages during the first three years of this phase of life. These
can best be introduced through a natural experience of language in con-
text, e.g. through verses, songs, stories and games which weave through
the world as it can be brought into the classroom.
In handwork, rhythmic work is introduced – knitting above all, but
various other possibilities can be included: braiding, for example. Sim-
ple stitches can be practiced in sewing, as well. A rhythmic style of work
is the aim. An artistic and imaginatively expressed spiritual, religious
and moral element should live in the form and inner being of all that is
offered.77

Third Stage of Development: Differentiation of Form/Image Consciousness

(The 8-9 year old child)
The human individuality descends further
towards the earth and enters the world of forma-
tive imaginations. This is the realm of the crea-
tive impulses which shape worlds.
These are the impulses which take sen-
tient expression in the soul as desire, joy,
anger, fear, and so forth. The world of im-
agination which is characteristic of the
current stage precedes an individuated,
clear ego consciousness. Thus, such forma-
tive impulses are still experienced by the child in half-conscious fash-
ion, as impressions comparable to impressions of color, tone or weight
in the sense world, rather than as inner soul experiences. The child’s
consciousness is not isolated from the creative impulses of the surround-
ing world; beings are still experienced as mutually interpenetrating.
The life and rhythmic body now begins to be more articulated, that
is, to take on a differentiated structure. A palette or repertoire of forma-
tive activity out of which the child can consciously bring forth different
qualities develops.

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Second Grade: Methodology
Overall, the first three years of the life organization’s development
are characterized by a receptivity to what comes from the surrounding
world, but the child in this stage of life is already significantly less re-
ceptive to the formative environment than was the case in the preced-
ing two years. By beginning from learning with the whole group and
then introducing successive stages of differentiation into groups, the
children are called upon to become increasingly active. The children
should now always understand the meaning of what they are writing
and speaking (in the first grade, it is sometimes enough if they under-
stand that they are practicing writing). This holds for other subjects, as
well.
More and more care should be brought into a differentiated under-
standing of nature. The tree should begin to be a birch, rowan or oak,
rather than something that represents all of them. Gestures and charac-
teristics of the animals can be brought to consciousness (not intellectu-
ally but through movement, drawing, and so on.) The children should
have an increasing consciousness of the natural environment of the lo-
cal area, and their dynamic activity should be brought into their artistic
expression in language, drawing, music, and so on.

Second Grade: Curriculum

A human being in contact with the world of archetypes lying just
above the world of normal ego consciousness can rise above his or her
separate ego, becoming saintly. The archetypes of the animals also ema-
nate from this world. Thus, a human being unconsciously influenced
by this world can fall into a one-sidedness which is characteristic of the
animal realm. This one-sidedness then has something archetypal, but
also something animal (beastly) about it.
Legends of the saints and animal fables bring out these two possi-
bilities, respectively. Both saint and animal are in contact with the realm
above the human realm: the one rises up to this realm, the other de-

119
scends from it. It is this archetypal quality which one seeks to express in
the second grade. The detailed study of the actual life and activity of
foxes, mice or ants, for example, or a more biographical approach to the
life of the saints, both belong to a later stage of the child’s development.
The visual aspect of language, the word in its written form as an
entity independent of the sound, begins to be accessible to the children.
Cursive writing (writing a word as a single form) and conventional spell-
ing can be introduced. In painting the mood of an image or story is
depicted through the play of colors.
Handwork brings consciousness into the rhythmic work through
more complicated knitting patterns (e.g. with changes of stitch to create
patterns) and the introduction of the more flexible crochet. Weaving can
be introduced.
In eurythmy, the sounds can be deepened and made more conscious,
e.g. larger and smaller gestures for them and gestures in various re-
gions (above, below, in front, behind). Movements of different qualities,
e.g. through the elements (fire, air, water, earth) should be practiced.
Dividing into separate groups (with the same or analogous movements,
however) can be begun. Spirals, e.g. question and answer forms, should
be emphasized.

Fourth Stage of Development: Individuated Form/ Ego Consciousness

(9-10 year old child)
On the path towards incarnation, the hu-
man individuality is now ready to enter into an
earthly existence from the ‘Paradise’ of the spir-
itual world. He or she gains an individual ego,
a sense of self as separate and different from other
beings, who are now observed more outwardly
and clearly rather than experienced inwardly
and in more dreamlike fashion. The ego has cho-
sen tasks for this incarnation and thus faces the
reality of human work on earth, and the neces-

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sity of cooperating with the other beings on earth, as well as being for the first
time capable of acting independently of the spiritual beings which weave earth’s
destiny. The human being is born as an earthly individuality.
This individualization now takes place in the life sphere. The life
body begins establishing its independence from the surrounding envi-
ronment. As it does so, the receptivity to image and gesture (more pre-
cisely, to the realm of formative activity) which characterized the pre-
ceding years fades, while the child’s objectivity and self-sufficiency in
this realm increase. Awakening to individuality, the child becomes much
more aware of the origin of influences from the environment. The par-
ticular qualities of each person’s nature become associated with their
origin in a unique identity, on the one hand; in nature, the mystery of
activity without apparent originating individuality calls for explana-
tion, on the other hand. The question of the origin of the world (as forma-
tive activity) arises in various forms.
Thus it is that the child becomes more sharply conscious of the
formative activity of those around him or her (as well as his or her own
manner of life and expression). Self-consciousness becomes associated
with the rhythmic and life organization.
The actual content or activity of the life body at this time remains
largely dependent upon what has already been and what continues to
be absorbed from the child’s surroundings, though now more con-
sciously and selectively. The life sheath has been building the child’s
life body into an image of what was formed in the spiritual worlds; it
must make use of such images, gestures and descriptions as are avail-
able to the child in its environment. These are then incorporated into
the child’s life of gesture, memory, living thought and imagination. The
life body is thus a result of its sheath’s choosing among and giving form
to the available formative substance, whereby originally inherited struc-
tures provide a starting point. This process thus depends upon a suffi-
cient quality and range of formative substance – activity, imaginative
pictures, and so forth – being available in the child’s environment, in
order that the sheath can shape these into a self-sufficient formative or-
ganization.
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Third Grade: Methodology
New questions arise for the children: ‘Where do you come from?’
‘Where do I come from?’ ‘Where does the world come from?’ Children
now look to experience that the teacher’s authority draws upon a higher
source and is not merely an expression of earthly personality. The chil-
dren may and should now be called upon individually to show their
mastery of skills. They must now be able to master material independ-
ently.

Third Grade: Curriculum

We have arrived at the experience of ego in the realm of the forma-
tive forces (i.e., the realm of image). The monotheistic God is the image
of spiritual existence at the ego level is brought alive through the stories
of the Old Testament beginning with the creation; the experience of God
as an inner unity, single and universal, corresponds to the inner experi-
ence of the ego which awakens at this time. Starting with the story of the
creation of man, the Old Testament goes on to describe the stages of
human development, the reception of laws governing human interac-
tion and actions on the earth and the building of an earthly spiritual-
physical house, the temple. It thus gives an awareness that the human
being is of divine origin and is guided by God in his relationships with
his fellow men and women as well as with the realms of nature. Man’s
practical work on earth is a central theme of the year; the various as-
pects of building an earthly house, on the one hand, and of cultivating
the earth, on the other hand, are characterized in the Building and Farm-
ing main lessons.
In building, the differentiated work of the various trades and the
need for a conscious cooperation between them are emphasized, while
in farming the contributions and roles of the animals, the plants and the
land itself are brought out, drawing attention to how the farmer, the
human being, stands in the position of being able to properly guide and
harmonize their interrelationships. Each realm of nature is separate from

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but depends upon all the others (e.g. the land on the animals for ma-
nure, the plants on the soil for their growth, the animals on the plants
for their food).
At the very moment of becoming aware of himself as differentiated
and separate from his fellow-beings, which is the ego experience in the
third grade, man is thus linked ‘horizontally’ to his fellow human be-
ings through the cooperative relationships between human beings in
building and ‘vertically’ to the other kingdoms of nature through his
organizing and harmonizing activity in farming.
The study of grammar, which is an experience of the ego in lan-
guage, can begin; focusing on syntax the children should begin to ac-
quire a feeling for the structure of sentences that lives in the language.
The parts of the sentence must be comprehended (actor, activity, object
acted upon, as in “God created the heaven and the earth’). The cultivation of
clearly articulated speech belongs to this experience as well. Appropri-
ate punctuation can then be derived from the relation of the breath to
speech. Here, as everywhere in this phase of the education, images of
the activity of the elements treated (e.g. parts of speech and punctua-
tion) rather than static definitions are brought.

(Old Testament)

God

(Building) Other trades Human being Other trades (Building)

Animals

Plants

Land

(Farming}

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 In painting, more objectivity can enter as the children begin to de-
pict objects found in the outer world in a more clearly formed way, a
definite step beyond the soul-expressive quality that was previously
apprropriate. In handwork, embroidery can be introduced, for example
covering a small felt ball (which can also be made by the children). Ini-
tial clay pottery experiences such as simple pinch pots may be offered.
In eurythmy, the forms for I, you and he/she/it are introduced. More
complicated forms, especially the ‘harmonious 8' form (or other forms
where the children must alternate crossings) can be practiced, stimulat-
ing more individualization. In tone eurythmy, the gestures for pitch may
be introduced.

Fifth Stage of Development: Creative Form

(10-11 year-old-child)
Upon descending from the ego into the sen-
tient body, we enter into an element where con-
sciousness is split into the realms of willing,
feeling and thinking. In the sentient organiza-
tion, archetypal qualities originating in the
realm of imagination take on fixed forms. In
the sentient body, these qualities are translated
into soul forces. The same qualities come to ex-
pression in nature in the animal world,
whereby each animal is an image of one of these
archetypal qualities realized in physical form.
In the now independent life organization, enduring complexes of
formative pattern can develop. The life organization begins to take on a
more fixed character; elements from the environment are less readily
absorbed, or rather need to be consciously assimilated. This tendency
will become more pronounced over the next years.78 The child’s own
creative (formative) powers begin to be more active thereby.

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 An increasing differentiation in the formative force organization al-
lows for an increasingly differentiated experience of gesture and image.
In particular, memory, thinking and imagination become more clearly
distinguished from one another. These three qualities or expressions of
the life organization are connected both with the past, present and fu-
ture, as well as with feeling, thought and will, respectively. The life or-
ganization is experiencing the world’s sentience. This is connected with
an increasingly conscious experience of the animal world.

Fourth Grade: Methodology

The children can begin to become independently creative; this can
be facilitated by working in small groups (e.g. composing poems ex-
pressive of various animals). The teacher will normally begin to encoun-
ter the image of more intensive soul forces of the children during this
year, just as an image of awakening egos was encountered in the third
grade. Their thinking, feeling and willing can be called upon to enter
into the work correspondingly more intensively. This continues to be
through artistic, imaginative and rhythmic expression rather than by
making demands on their intellect, capacity for judgment or drive to-
wards accomplishments, which belong to the next phase of life, and for
which a preparation is being undertaken now in the formative force
organization.
The qualities of a theme, which previously were experienced
unconsciously through the style and manner in which subjects were
brought, may be brought out more consciously now (for example,
through coming to a characterization of the various figures that play a
role in Norse Mythology).

Fourth Grade: Curriculum

In the fourth grade, the children’s attention is drawn to man’s
differentiated nature as head, middle (rhythmic) and limb being and
then to how different animals each emphasize one of these aspects. The
animals’ forms, lives and habits are characterized as vividly as possible.

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In rhythmic work, movements of the whole body, the legs and the hands
may be differentiated, for example by walking and clapping different
rhythms simultaneously.
A corresponding three-fold division of man’s soul being – be-
tween thinking, feeling and willing – underlies the mythology of the
Norsemen. This is expressed, for example, in the struggle of the Aesir
(the beings of beauty and harmony) to hold their kingdom against the
dwarves (the beings of one-sided cleverness) and the giants (the beings
of one-sided strength), or in the demonic beings which are exaggera-
tions of each of these aspects: the half-deathly Hella, the Serpent
Jormungand and the Fenris Wolf. The Norse mythology is a mythology
of the gods of the sentient world.
The year as a whole is characterized by the step from the whole-
ness of the unified ego to the multiplicity and richness of the sentient
realm, from the single God of the Old Testament to the multiplicity of
the Norse Gods. In language, we can take hold of this same theme
through grammar by examining the parts of speech: the words of will
or action (verbs), feeling or description (adjectives) and thinking or ob-
jective character (nouns). The speech of the children can be developed
from being clear on to being lively. In mathematics the step is made
from whole numbers to fractions, while in the social relationships there
is usually a step from the wholeness of the class to the building of cliques.
In environmental studies (what used to be called home surround-
ings), a more differentiated awareness of the geography of the local area
can begin to be awakened (e.g., where the various families of the class
or school live, the various histories, and economic life of localities in the
surrounding area, and so forth).
In handwork, cross-stitch can be practiced and patterns designed
by the children. This picks up the consciousness of the previous year
and brings it into a flowing, imaginative dynamic.
Stepping consonance in poetry and thinking, feeling and will-
ing forms should be practiced in eurythmy. Group work with differen-
tiated movements can be introduced.

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Sixth Stage of Development: Interactive, Patterned Form
(The 11-12 year old child)
The incarnating human being’s con-
sciousness descends next into the realm of the
life forces, the source of health and well being.
We come into a more vegetative, dreamier con-
sciousness. Rhythm, grace and harmony are
experienced in the world around us and in our-
selves. We are gently aware of the up-build-
ing growth forces at work within us. Flow,
pattern and rhythm are experienced as crea-
tive process. Sleep life changes as the bridge
to the sleeping physical body is now made,
where the life forces are still active when the higher bodies withdraw. In waking
life, we have the experience of levity, of the ability to run, leap and climb.
The realm of the life forces brings experiences of balance and har-
mony, joy of life and the feeling that the children have one foot still in
the heavens and the other on the earth, like the plant with its roots in
the earth, its flower in the heavens, and the rhythmically developing
leaves in between. The child’s formative forces encounter the formative
forces of the environment, e.g. of the plant world and all that metamor-
phoses. The activity of the world is experienced now as a play between
processes which build up forms and those which break them down again;
the life body is differentiating itself from and thus experiencing life proc-
esses outside of itself. A kind of harmony between inner and outer ex-
perience thus exists, giving rise to a sense of being in balance with the
world. What the child now expresses is no longer primarily an echo of
outer stimulation, but a true revelation of his or her own inner being.

Fifth Grade: Methodology

The experience of formative qualities building up the world should
be cultivated. ‘All that is, is flux.’ The children’s own movement be-
longs to this; imaginations should flow into outer movement, experi-

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ences of the world into imaginations. The realm of interrelationship
(whether this is between people or in other realms) can now be brought
to consciousness. The children's attention can constantly be drawn to
the processes of growth and metamorphosis that underlie all existence.

Fifth Grade: Curriculum

Stories are drawn from this consciousness of the formative world
bordering on the physical realm: the Indian, Persian, Egyptian and Greek
mythologies. These stories of the gods of the formative world are very
different in character from the Norse mythology.
The experience of moving between active and passive moods (the
two modes of giving and receiving) can be explored in the English les-
sons, as well as communication (letter writing) and reporting indirect
speech. The realm of growth and life itself is explored in the plant realm:
the growth processes and the metamorphoses of organic form which
take place within the single plant as well as in the evolution from the
most primitive fungus up to the noble tree. Geometry is explored through
rhythmic constructions, still primarily executed freehand (i.e. without
the use of mechanical instruments). Painting on a color wash background
and other simple layered techniques can be introduced.
In handwork, soft garments which mold to the body’s form can be
knitted: socks, mittens or even gloves would be appropriate. Embroi-
dery should be pursued in decorative forms.
In eurythmy, transformations of geometric forms may be begun (e.g.
the triangle and pentagon translations). Active, passive and being verbs
may be introduced. In tone eurythmy, facility in walking rhythms should
be cultivated and the scale experienced as out-breath (beginning from
the tonic up to the fourth) and in-breath (from the fifth to the octave).
This experience can then combine with the sense of pitch to give the
gestures for the tones.

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Seventh Stage of Development: Unity of Gestalt
(12-13 year old child)
Incarnation into the physical body is character-
ized on the one hand by an awakening to the clarity
of sense-experience, and on the other by a capacity
for clear logical thinking. Death is encountered as an
inner experience, for the physical body is the bearer
of death.
In the next phase, the life body, whose es-
sence is formative activity, is confronted with the
lifeless, formed world in a way which no longer focuses on the activity
which works formatively in this realm. The child’s perception begins to
awaken to the physical world’s finished forms.
Sense perceptions light up in clear consciousness for the life organi-
zation. Because it no longer experiences the outer world’s formative
activity, the life organization can tend to become static now; it can only
overcome this by actively exploring the relationships and evolutions
underlying and revealed by sense perceptions in the physical world.
The life organization remains passive when confronted with the lifeless
world of objects. Not entering actively into sense experience, but sim-
ply receiving both sense experience without applying thought or im-
agination to this, gives rise to a materialistic experience. Materialism is
a state of passivity reflective of a life organization dominated by the
physical world instead of being awakened by it.
At the end of the life organization’s phase of development, the child
thus stands at a decisive crux. The outer world is no longer stimulating
the child’s life forces into inner activity. Will the child become inwardly
passive as a result? Will he or she seek for artificially intensified stimu-
lation in the outer world (e.g. through media, drugs or eroticism)? Or
will a capacity for an inwardly motivated interest in the sense world be
discovered, making use of the newly developing forces of conscious-
ness?

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 To develop an inner life in the face of the loss of the experience of a
living, spirit-filled world is one of the greatest challenges of human de-
velopment. This is the challenge presented in the conclusion of this phase
of development.
Incarnation into the physical body is characterized on the one hand
by an awakening to the clarity of sense-experience, and on the other by
a capacity for clear logical thinking. Death is encountered as an inner
experience, for the physical body is the bearer of death; this experience
has the character of an image, for it takes place in the formative organi-
zation, the bearer of images.

Sixth Grade: Methodology

Images of the fixed, physical world can now be employed and culti-
vated. Working from direct observation of this world becomes appro-
priate for the first time. Previously, observation was stimulated by the
material presented; this now begins to reverse itself. Sensory observa-
tion in all respects is to be cultivated.
In this year, there is a culmination of a rhythm that started with the
imitation of work in the kindergarten (this echoes on into the crafts and
gardening in the first and second grades) and was transformed in the
third grade into building up an inner picture and imagination of practical
work (partly achieved through actually experiencing the activities). This
image building echoed on into the fourth grade (traditional work of the
region) and Five (the geographical distribution of different crafts, farm-
ing and industry over the country). In the sixth grade, now, practical
(and hard physical) work is required of each individual in order to ac-
complish practical tasks: gardening, woodwork, etc.; this requires dif-
ferent forces than the appeal to the imagination of the younger years.
The last years gave an image of various forms of work. In the sixth grade,
the actual accomplishment (and thus the quantity of work) begins to play
a role as well. The introduction at this time of more physical gymnastics
and sports is appropriate.

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Sixth Grade: Curriculum
Science in the sixth grade concentrates on describing what we can
experience of the world through the senses. Awakening the children to
how much sense impressions – acoustical, tactile, visual, olfactory, and
so forth – can reveal of the world around us is an entire path of discov-
ery of its own. Plenty of time can be given to exploring the manifold
impressions before beginning to order the experience. How the outer
world creates that which we experience even in the simplest of sense
perceptions becomes a fascinating question, for example, how various
sounding bodies produce tones, how water reflects and refracts images.
These investigations should be descriptive rather than theoretical in char-
acter. First we have to come to know the physical world, to build a clear
image of its character. In the next phase of life, an understanding of how
this character arises can be built up.
Mechanics, optics and acoustics, on the one hand, and mineralogy,
on the other hand, are investigations of the properties of the physical
earth. These can be explored through observation of the characteristic
phenomena of each.
We begin the study of history, the description of events as they took
place in the physical world, leaving behind the world of mythology. The
history of the first investigations of the laws and logic of the known
physical world, on the one hand (e.g. Archimedes and Aristotle), and
the progressive conquest of its territories, on the other hand (e.g. Alex-
ander the Great and Julius Caesar) are described.
In English, the mastery of practical vocabulary (business descrip-
tions) and of the conditions under which something can be realized (sub-
junctive mood) are appropriate.
In handwork, work to precise form is introduced. Shoes and slip-
pers are ideal for this. Making book-covers could also be introduced.
In eurythmy, rod exercises should be practiced. Concrete and ab-
stract nouns may be introduced. The bar line may be introduced in tone
eurythmy.

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 Toward the end of this phase of development, the children’s con-
sciousness has narrowed to the physical world, actually the realm of
death. They are increasingly caught up in sense experience and their
physical bodies. What will they find here that can guide them further?
Either a new impulse will appear to turn them towards regaining a con-
sciousness in and of other layers of being than just the physical, or they
might descend yet further, yet deeper than the physical world.
Mankind’s evolution has indeed taken both of these paths. In order
that mankind, having lost all its earlier awareness of higher worlds, can
find the way back up, a guiding impulse must be found in physical
existence itself. In order to make this possible, a spiritual being carrying
this impulse entered the physical world, the realm of death. This is the
turning point to a new consciousness: the Mystery of Golgotha, and
this event must find an adequate expression in the sixth grade.

THE LIVING IMAGE, CREATIVITY AND AUTHORITY

In this phase of life, the child’s sentient organization, which is the
bearer of the capacities of thinking, feeling and willing and also of judg-
ment, is not yet independent of either the lower organizations or the
surrounding environment. The child therefore does not receive impres-
sions from the world of consciousness (sentience) directly, but rather
mediated by the life organization. These impressions are borne upon
formative experiences such as image-based thinking and rhythm. Ar-
tistic impressions are especially effective mediators of sentient content;
thus, story and verse, music, pictures, artistic movement, costume and
the decoration of spaces all belong to the basic and essential pedagogi-
cal tools of the elementary school years, as they provide especially ef-
fective impressions in this phase of life.
Whatever content is to be brought in this phase of life only works
pedagogically if it is translated into imaginative or rhythmic form. Con-
cepts brought as abstractions, for example, are in a deeper sense mean-
ingless to the child. Children can, indeed, be brought to memorize (at

132
least the verbal forms of) such concepts and to apply them to practical
exercises, but this is for the formative body the equivalent of what child
labor in a sweatshop, factory or field is for the child’s physical body.
Actual understanding is achieved neither through mechanical applica-
tion, no matter how much this is practiced, nor through memorized
abstractions.
Concepts clothed in imaginative pictures stimulate the child’s own
formative-creative activity. They are ‘digestible’ by the formative organi-
zation, i.e. are transformed into nourishment for the child’s life forces
and live as inner pictures capable of growth and metamorphosis. Above
all, they are taken up much more deeply into the child’s memory than
concepts barren of such an imaginative garment. Since all of our con-
cepts of the world are in reality the result of ongoing metamorphoses in
human understanding, as opposed to being final truths, such a presen-
tation allows the child to take up concepts in a way that is appropriate
to this continually metamorphosing understanding, stimulating its ca-
pacity rather than hardening it to a collection of gathered stones of
knowledge.
An example will be useful here. It was once considered that the sun
went around the motionless, flat earth. Later, Galileo and Copernicus
showed that the earth was round and circled around the motionless
sun. Still later, it was shown that the earth and sun went around a com-
mon center, i.e. that the earth went around the sun and the sun around
the earth simultaneously. Einstein then showed that it is equally mean-
ingful to say that the earth stands still while the whole universe turns
around it as that the sun stands still or that both move; furthermore,
that the space in which the earth exists is itself curved. To teach any of
these descriptions as a dogmatic truth conveys a deep misunderstand-
ing of how we form concepts of an essentially dynamic world open to
multiple levels of interpretation and various viewpoints.
A similar principle applies to the education of the feeling life in this
phase of childhood. Feelings clothed in imaginative pictures stimulate

133
effective yet flexible impressions in the formative organization, nourish
the formative forces and metamorphose to meet new demands. A story
about a tender little seedling hiding from the trampling giant’s feet will
awaken more sensitivity in young children to the spring flowers just
coming up underfoot than a thousand appeals to their conscience. This
is an age of life where a picture is truly worth a thousand words. Such
images then awaken and enrich the whole feeling life, giving it more
range and intensity.
The will life, too, is far more susceptible to the living image than to
abstract instructions. Telling children a story about a local potter dig-
ging the clay in his garden, carefully sieving it and shaping it into a pot,
baking it in a hand-built stone kiln and then, with trepidation, opening
the kiln to see if the pot has survived the delicate process of firing will
give far more stimulus to their pottery than a thousand admonitions or
dry instructions as to how to sieve the clay properly and how to form a
proper bowl. Such images bear impulses of will into the formative life
of the child in such a way that these impulses can live in manifold fash-
ion, metamorphosing to meet new needs. They nourish the child’s whole
life of will, not just the particular activity at hand.
In these years, images are bearers of soul forces for and to the child.
All the images that are brought to or that come to the child must there-
fore be carefully examined as regards the concepts, feelings and will
impulses that they convey.
In every age and culture, the need has existed to provide worthy
teachings with an equally worthy imaginative garment. Folk stories and
mythologies arise out of this impulse. Like each age of childhood, each
age of civilization and culture has its own unique character. Stories and
mythologies drawn from a given age or culture will best suit the stage
of childhood that includes a comparable developmental task.79 The stock
of material available here is vast and rich.
To draw upon existing material alone is inadequate, however. It is
also necessary to consider what is to be brought by way of content and

134
to create new material to suit the needs at hand. This applies to the
presentation of curriculum material, to meeting the social situation of
the class, bringing in current events, or any other realm. The ability to
give such content an imaginative sheath capable of bearing it to the chil-
dren and living in them in a healthy way belongs to the pedagogical
tasks of this phase of life. The art of pedagogy is the essentially creative
and artistic faculty of transforming conceptual content, feelings or will
direction into a form that appeals to the imagination and memory.
At the same time, the soul content of the images that children re-
ceive from much of the modern world must be faced. It is apparent that
the entertainment and marketing industries are directly or indirectly
responsible for an astonishing portion of the experience and images of
many children today. To exclude images bearing ugly, false or vicious
thoughts, feelings or will impulses, is, unfortunately, also a necessary
pedagogical task of this time stage. Unattended, such images distort the
inner life of the young child. Where they come to children, their effects
can only be mollified by putting them in a larger context that sets them
in a truer and healthier light, as a dissonance in music can be given a
context in which it serves the whole.

Judgment
The faculty of judgment also has its seat in the sentient organiza-
tion. It has already been mentioned that the sentient organization is not
yet independent either of the lower organizations or of outer influences
during this phase of life. Thus it is that the child’s judgments arise as
expressions of either what lives in these lower organizations or what
has been taken in from the environment rather than as an independent
faculty. A child in this phase of life will ‘judge’ what an appropriate
lunch is either on the basis of what he or she longs for, perhaps a candy
bar or through having been effectively impressed with the importance
of a certain diet (e.g. to eat a good main course before the dessert). There
is not yet an ability to evaluate a situation and to make a considered

135
judgment independently of these influences of the lower organizations
and the environment.
All that is a matter of judgment must, like the rest of soul content, be
conveyed through an appeal to the imaginative or rhythmic forces of
the child if it is to be effective. It thereby also remains flexible enough so
that the impulses so given metamorphose to meet new needs and situ-
ations rather than being clung to or rejected in later years as stones of
the soul.

Creative Authority
When a child perceives a capacity to comprehend the world in terms
of its soul content – to understand the concepts inherent in it, the feel-
ings appropriate for it and the will impulses effective in it – and yet to
translate this content into images that are meaningful and enlivening,
faith and love for the individual exhibiting this capacity are awakened
in the child’s being. Such an individual exercises an inner, creative au-
thority by weaving a world appropriate to the child, the substance of
which carries impulses necessary to the child’s development and growth,
yet the form of which corresponds to the current level of development.
The appropriate form evolves with the stages of this developmental
phase. For example, an appeal to practical activities is a more appropri-
ate and natural bearer of pedagogical content during the earlier stages
(say, for the six- to eight-year-old child). An appeal to artistic and social
experience is appropriate to all of this, the middle phase of childhood,
but especially so to its middle stages (say, for the seven- to eleven-year-
old child). An appeal to reflective capacities is more natural and appro-
priate to its later stages (say, for the ten- to twelve-year-old child). Natu-
rally, something of all of these aspects will appear in all of the stages,
but the balance will shift with the progress of the child’s development.
In every case, however, the effective path of pedagogy is by way of the
living image and rhythmic experience.

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METAMORPHOSIS, RHYTHM AND HABIT LIFE IN THE SECOND PHASE OF LIFE
Just as the physical world is experienced through the physical body’s
senses, so is the formative world perceived through the life body’s or-
gans of perception. The formative organization perceives in time. These
perceptions come to consciousness as experiences of phenomena such
as rhythm and metamorphosis.
In the first phase of life, the child lives in the condition of continuity
characteristic of the physical world. The adult brings rhythm and meta-
morphosis into this world, but the child does not experience these di-
rectly. The young child experiences that things have recurred or changed
but cannot yet come to an independent experience of rhythm or proc-
esses of metamorphosis. Actual experiences of the formative world, begin
with the second phase of life.80

Metamorphosis
Over the course of the day, week, month and year81 – indeed over
the whole of the elementary school years – the sequence of experiences
should be a transformative, metamorphic one. Pedagogically, this im-
plies that the teacher should remain (and transform) with the class
throughout this period (corresponding to grades 1–6) in so far as this is
possible. Generally, such important elements of the child’s life as the
parents, teachers, home, community, and so on, work formatively for
the child in this phase of life when they combine continuity with devel-
opment. Processes of metamorphosis will inevitably lead to outer
changes over time. When these changes can be experienced by the child
as the result of a process of transformation, they can be (and can be
accepted as) effective and meaningful.
It is also beneficial to focus on a single, central subject or theme over
a period of time and thereby bring both content and approach through
a process of transformation until a natural conclusion can be drawn.
(See below for more about the appropriate period for such a subject
block.) A significant portion of each day can be dedicated to this central

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theme in various ways. Other subjects and lessons can then be coordi-
nated with this main theme. For example, the songs, artwork and math-
ematical tasks might all relate to the geography lesson at hand. To shape
the sequence of subjects (say, over the day and week) and the succes-
sion of content within a given subject over time thus becomes a primary
task and challenge.

The Three-Day Rhythm

The principle of metamorphosis also applies to the form in which
material is given. For each single component of a theme (a particular
moment in history or process in mathematics, for example), a phase of
introduction to the material is necessary. The first day, for instance, can
be dedicated to calling up an image of the material to be brought in the
children’s inner life (e.g. through an imaginative presentation).
The next stage is to evaluate how much of a feeling for the material
has been achieved. This material can then be explored and deepened,
e.g. through questions, conversation, or an artistic activity. Opportu-
nity is given for the children to deepen their inner connection with the
particular aspect at hand and to anchor this in their memory. This is
best done on the second day, when the memory is still fresh.
In the last stage, the material can be articulated in a clear form
through practical exercises (e.g. in the case of a new principle of gram-
mar or mathematics) or by giving the chance to the child to express the
subject in an appropriate form (e.g. in an essay or written summary).
This can normally be accomplished on the third day.
In each of these stages, the approach is oriented around the child’s
formative experience. The stages can be characterized as cultivating the
image based thinking, feeling and memory, and practical skills and habit
life of the child, respectively. The three-day rhythm allows each aspect
of a subject to go through the phases of introduction, exploration and
final expression. Following this, ongoing practice will usually be neces-
sary; often this can be subsumed into the new content that can be brought

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if this is indeed a continuation and further transformation of the themes
already worked on.

Rhythmic Experience
Rhythmic forms of experience are characteristic for the life organi-
zation. The cultivation of such experiences builds up this organization.
This task can be characterized on various time scales:
The year. At the beginning of a school year, normally the autumn in
the Northern hemisphere, new initiatives and fresh directions can be
presented. Over the winter, subjects can be deepened and practiced.
Spring is a natural time for bringing subjects into practical manifesta-
tion and completion. Summer affords occasion for a glance back at the
fruits of the year, rounding off and celebrating the achieved develop-
ment.
The year is the cycle of building up the physical world. It thus plays
a stronger role in the younger years, but is nonetheless to be considered
in this phase of life as well.
The month. The (lunar) month is the cycle of creation in the forma-
tive world. It is the time that it takes to build up a new habit or to anchor
a memory, for example. Work with a given theme is most effective when
developed over a period approximately corresponding to a month’s time.
It is then natural for the child to turn his attention to another theme, and
to exercises different capacities, which are then fresh. Block teaching is
thus natural to this phase of life, when it is the habit life and memory
that is being educated.
The week. The pattern of experience over the week is influenced by
the rhythm of developing a subject (see “The Three-Day Rhythm”). This
is perhaps the most significant aspect of a weekly rhythm in these years.
A weekly rhythm is natural in which conscious practice maintains
the material between sessions, for example, a weekly music lesson with
daily practice in between. For the child of this age, such consciousness
generally cannot be maintained independently, but a well-developed

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habit may substitute for this to a certain extent. In addition, where con-
sciousness needs to be brought to the habit life (for example through a
practice session to see that habits have not been lost or a practice of
skills that are in any case generally exercised daily), a weekly rhythm
can be appropriate. For ongoing learning, it is not an effective rhythm at
this age. It comes into its own in the middle and secondary school years,
however.
The day. The day is a miniature lifetime: each day, we come into our
bodies anew, live on earth and return at the close to the spiritual worlds
from which we came. Each morning we reorient ourselves to the earthly
circumstances we find before us, even if these are quite similar to those
which we left the night before. Rhythmic activity (e.g. through move-
ment, speech and/or song) and memory practice help to bring the (still
waking, i.e. incarnating) child into the physical and formative organi-
zations and readies these for exercise in the course of the day.
In the morning, as in the beginning of life, we come into our sense/
nervous system first; perception and thinking are most awake at this
time. Thus, a substantial part of the morning can be dedicated to ex-
ploring a main theme in varied, balancing ways, including the recep-
tion of new material, recall and deepening of the relationship to previ-
ous content and the practice or expression of already mastered content
in clear form. Each day’s content and approach should be experienced
as a metamorphosis of the previous day’s content and approach. The
continuity provided for the learning experience of the child by recalling
what was brought in a previous lesson before proceeding with new
material, and illuminating the connection between the two, strengthens
both the memory and the life body. At the close of the lesson, a brief
outlook towards the next step has a similar effect, awakening the child’s
interest and curiosity.
In the middle part of the day, we come into the rhythmic system;
artistic subjects are appropriate for lesson times during this part of the
day. In the afternoon part of the day, we incarnate into our limbs most
strongly. Practical subjects such as crafts and movement work belong here.

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 At the close of the day, we prepare for the return to the night (to the
spiritual world). A last content or review to take with us into this time
creates an orientation for our return the next day. Such a close to the
school day has a real importance during these elementary years. The
sense of continuity and transformation is partially dependent upon such
a moment.
The lesson. A sense for rhythm in teaching must become a tool of
the teacher. A natural sense of breathing can be established in many
ways, for example, between times when the child is more passively re-
ceiving content, times when material is being practiced and times when
the child is outwardly and expressively active. Each of these aspects
(reception, practice, and expression) can also be given a living, rhyth-
mic form. The more that this can be effected, the deeper these appeal to
the child’s formative organization, e.g. the memory and habit life of the
child.
Just as the state of intuitive unity with the environment was charac-
teristic of the physical body, the state of rhythmic inspiration is gener-
ally characteristic of the life body. Throughout the years of this period
of life, experiences such as expressive gesture and movement, contrac-
tion and expansion, rhythm, and so forth – breathing into and out of the
environment in many ways – should be cultivated in order to ensure
the healthy development of the life body’s forces.82 It is above all such
artistic, imaginative and wonder-filled experiences of life, brought in a
balanced way, which build up this body. Most important during this
time are experiences of dance, song, playing of instruments, poetry and
drama, story telling, painting, sculpture, the artistic creation of spatial
environments, and nature experiences.

The Habit Life

In the second phase of life, much of teaching is dedicated to the
establishment and cultivation of habits. Writing, reading and number
work, for example, are all founded upon fluently available habits (of
converting sounds or, later, words to letters and vice versa; of the re-

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sults of number combinations, and so on). Other examples include the
habits of reading music, of using tools properly, of social conventions in
and out of the classroom, of the proper use of grammar, and so on, with-
out end.
A child who has not mastered the material through his or her memory
or cannot apply this in practice, i.e. habitually, has not learned. The regu-
lar and habitual practice of the principles brought is thus a primary task
of education at this time.
The establishment and cultivation of healthy habits in all spheres of
life – work habits, social habits, and personal habits – can be accom-
plished only through the influence of consciousness from the child’s
environment. When a child lives to a great extent outside of this sphere
of consciousness (which can only be maintained by those who have al-
ready achieved an independent sentient organization, i.e. adults and
older children83 ), it is impossible to build up or maintain such a habit
life. This has serious consequences for the development of the child’s
memory and thinking.

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 Chapter VI

THE THIRD PHASE OF LIFE:

THE MIDDLE AND SECONDARY SCHOOL YEARS

SENTIENCE
The sentient organization’s organs of perception mediate experi-
ence of a world higher than that of formative activity, consisting of quali-
ties of consciousness. These qualities of consciousness are not normally
experienced directly through the sentient organization, however. Were
they to be experienced there, this would be as qualities such as radiant
emanation, interweaving reciprocity, or harboring receptivity. (Such quali-
ties are difficult even to express in language.) Instead, their reflection in
the physical body is experienced. This is differentiated according to

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where such qualities are chiefly held back: in the nervous system, the
rhythmic system (the circulation and the breath) or the metabolic/limb
system.
The qualities inherent in the sphere of radiant emanation are pri-
marily held back by the nervous system. Impressions from this sphere
give rise to associative thinking, whereby one stream of ideation goes
over into another, setting off yet another, and so on. No logical order or
sequence is present; analogous qualities give rise to links of association.
This contrasts with the kind of thinking that is stimulated by the
life organization’s activity, which gives rise to metamorphosing images
similar to what is experienced in dreams. When thinking permeates the
physical body, fixed concepts associated with perceptions arise. The ego
orders thought into logical patterns and sequences.
There is one influence on thought that does not arise from any of
the human being’s physical attributes. When our thinking meets some-
thing of the world that is beyond it, when it cannot grasp an experience
through any level of the human being, wonder arises.
The sphere of interweaving reciprocity makes an impression pri-
marily on the rhythmic systems of the circulation and breath. Impres-
sions from this sphere give rise to experiences of sympathy and antipa-
thy. Because these experiences live in the rhythmic system, sympathy
invariably gives rise sooner or later to antipathy, antipathy to sympa-
thy, back and forth in rhythmic alternation.
Feeling manifests through all levels of the human being. When it
appears in the life organization, it gives rise to emotions. The life of
feeling’s expression in the physical body is experienced as stimulation
or quietude (this can be experienced through breathing more quickly or
more slowly, more nervously or more regularly, for example). The ego
experience of feelings is sensitivity. Here, feeling becomes an organ able
to sense the nature of the world around it, not just the inner world of the
human being. When our feeling encounters something in the world that
calls it out but which it is unable to bring into any of the forms it can

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take on in the incarnated members of the human being, the boundary
experience of empathy arises.
The sphere of harboring receptivity is held back chiefly by the meta-
bolic and limb/muscular systems. The impressions of this sphere give
rise to experiences of will such as desire, inertia and fear. These experi-
ences have the characteristic that they tend to perpetuate themselves:
i.e. desire gives rise to further desire, inertia to further inertia, fear to
further fear.
The life organization finds expression in the will through the drives.
The expression of will in the physical body leads to instinctive responses.
The ego gives expression to the life of will through striving towards
conscious goals.84
When the will experiences something beyond its capacity to grasp
through any incarnated aspect of the human being, an experience arises
analogous to wonder but of an active nature. When the active will is
slightly overwhelmed by something, when it does not feel itself fully
capable of taking hold of the necessity before it but is called to do so, the
experience of responsibility arises.
Wonder, empathy and responsibility are in so far gifts of grace
as they cannot arise in the human being through the activity of think-
ing, feeling or willing, but only when something larger than the indi-
vidual’s capacity for this activity nears. Through the transcendental re-
ality of the world descending by grace upon the human being, wonder,
empathy and responsibility awaken in thinking, feeling and willing.

THE TRANSITIONAL YEARS

We have seen that in this phase of development, the sentient sheath
begins to incarnate, that is, to build up the next member of the child’s
earthly being, the sentient organization. The preliminary phase of this
process is devoted to the transformation of the physical body, in the
growth of the limbs as well as other changes in the physical organism.
The next phase of the process is then devoted to the transformation of

145
the life organization into a suitable vehicle for the sentient organiza-
tion; this manifests in the hormonal changes which result in the onset of
menstruation and the awakening of the sexual drives as well as the de-
velopment of the secondary sexual characteristics.85 During both of these
phases, the sentient sheath itself must also establish as its carrier a body
that is capable of integrating with the physical and life bodies.
Thus, during the first two years of this third and the physical body
phase of development, the sentient organization is still at work build-
ing a foundation for its activity in the lower bodies. Only after this pre-
liminary phase, known as pre-adolescence, does the sentient organiza-
tion become active in its own right through an inner life of sentient ex-
perience independent of – yet interwoven with – the physical and life
and rhythmic bodies.
Thus begins a transitional period. The capacity to experience through
the soul organization will only become fully available after this organi-
zation has first adapted to and transformed the physical and life bodies
in which it must dwell. During the first two stages of this phase of de-
velopment the child will primarily experience the developing soul-sen-
tient impressions subconsciously, i.e. as transmitted through image and
rhythmic experience. Soul experience (an experience of the world’s and
the child’s own soul qualities) arises, but only as mediated by the lower
organizations; thus, a capacity to attain a clear consciousness of this ex-
perience does not yet develop. Only when the sentient organization
begins the third stage of its development (forming a consciousness or-
gan) is the child able to be properly aware of the forces waking in him
or her.
New and powerful experiences begin to arise at this stage, arising
from the soul organization but experienced without clear consciousness.
For this reason, it is a time of particular danger to the child, who, unless
protected, must absorb the powerful soul experiences that the modern
world stimulates without yet being able to meet these experiences with
a consciousness awake enough to comprehend them.

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 There are thus good reasons for establishing these two years as a
separate period of the child’s upbringing. Traditional schooling regards
these as ‘swing’ years, either placing them at the end of the primary
school (in the ‘8+4’ model) or at the beginning of the secondary school
(in the ‘6+6’ model) or even establishing them in a separate middle school
(in the '5+3+4' or '6+2+4' models). That all of these models have a justi-
fication is evident from the above considerations. In any case, a balance
will have to be found between the two possibilities: an extension of the
education and upbringing actually appropriate to the previous phase
of development, i.e. the primary school years, but which offer a security
and protection which is needed for this transition; and an entry into the
more conscious experiences of the secondary school years, which re-
spond to the newly developing soul forces.
Support must be given to the children to help them understand the
soul experiences dawning within them and in the world around them,
but in such a way as does not awaken these prematurely, as the forces of
modern civilization already tend to do, and which recognizes that their
consciousness remains focused on the world they have left, while their
experience is already opening to the world they have not yet entered.

THE PEDAGOGY OF THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD

For transitional years, we can turn to the history of the period when
more consciousness was entering human existence, the ‘consciousness
soul’ age, when the traditions of the past ceased to be of sufficient inner
force to carry humanity. Such changes include the end of the hereditary
stream of rulers, the shift to a more conscious religious life (the Refor-
mation), the change in the character and nature of warfare from an en-
counter of personal courage to a failure of consciousness to deal with
the world’s problems, the exploration of those parts of the world lying
outside the traditional realm of experience. In short, the Ages of Explo-
ration and Revolution provide a rich content here. The form of the his-
tory lessons cannot yet depend upon drawing upon the pupil’s full

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waking consciousness (clear analytical thought), however, until the soul-
sentient organization has reached its maturity in the third year of its
development. Therefore story and image are still appropriate rather than
a more intellectual approach; symptomatic moments of history and rep-
resentative figures can be thus presented to bring about a transitional
stage of historical awareness. The capacity for making judgments is now
present, though it remains dreamy and applies more to feelings and
imaginative picture than to clear analytical thought, to which healthy
awakening comes after this transitional time.
In the sciences, to the sense-observation of natural phenomena is
now added a history of scientific discoveries, bringing the representa-
tive movements in scientific thought and technological discovery in a
descriptive or biographical form. (The theoretical or abstract compre-
hension of these will come in the following years.) The phenomenological
approach of the sixth grade is thus applied to what is potentially a more
theoretical content in both history and science.
In mathematics, a similar departure from the concrete is made
through the use of unknowns, the discovery of algorithms and theo-
rems, an approach to such elements as algebra and set theory, while
remaining very pictorial in the approach.
In languages, the awakening experiences can be approached through
the new life of feeling which is already half-consciously aroused through
the lyric mood of inner feeling (‘wish, wonder and surprise’ – but not
limited to these!) in the seventh grade and the dramatic mood of eighth
grade. On the other hand, the will life that is awakening can be ordered
through bringing clarity of expression into its formulations.

A WORD OF CAUTION
Two dangers to the child’s proper development during these years
should be touched upon. Firstly, demands made upon the child’s life of
soul86 before this has acquired its independence from the lower bodies
can draw the forces of consciousness too deeply into these lower bod-

148
ies. This can result in soul experience which remains too bound to the
activity of the lower bodies even in later life.
Secondly, during these preliminary years of its development the soul
organization is still extremely receptive and thus vulnerable to influ-
ences from the surrounding environment. Thus, protection from temp-
tations of soul is needed especially during this phase, when the recep-
tivity is much greater than in the fairly innocent phases of life that pre-
ceded this. Only after experiences in the soul organization become more
conscious, and more fully after the latter attains a significant degree of
individualization, does a measure of real independence and an inner
capacity for self-protection awaken.87

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES (III): THE SENTIENT ORGANIZATION

First stage of development: Consciousness in the Physical Body
(13-14 year old)
The first stage of the sentient organi-
zation’s development is devoted to
transforming its relationship to the
physical body and thus to establishing a
foundation for its workings and experi-
ence in the physical realm. The physi-
cal body itself also undergoes a trans-
formation under the influence of the
newly incarnating soul organization. As
in the corresponding stage of the life
body’s development, when the incarnat-
ing formative sheath transformed the physical body, no actually new
physical organs are created under the influence of this new level of be-
ing incarnating at this time; rather, what already exists as a basis in the
physical body is transformed or refashioned by the consciousness sheath
and the beings responsible for this level of development into a more
suitable vehicle for sentient life. In particular, there are three organs of

149
the physical body which are especially deeply transformed at this time
to serve as the basis for the sentient organization‘s capacities of willing,
feeling and thinking: the limbs, larynx and nervous system.
Each of these levels must now develop in its bodily basis in order
that they may support the new activity of the sentient organization. The
limbs grow much longer and develop more strength and agility; this
will be used for creative work in the physical world. The larynx devel-
ops to allow for a more expressive life of soul in speech and song (this
development is particularly obvious in the male). The focus of the nerv-
ous system is shifted away from the sympathetic nervous system (char-
acteristic of the first) and the parasympathetic system (characteristic of
the second phase of life) over to the central nervous system that now
provides a basis for the developing life of thought as a carrier of spir-
itual activity.
The faculty of evaluative judgment begins to be able to be called
upon to examine events in the physical world, and a tendency to evalu-
ate all such events subjectively becomes apparent. The organ of sen-
tience penetrating the physical body results in increasing consciousness
of and thus in awkwardness or self-consciousness in relating to this body.
The body is also rapidly being changed in ways which strongly affect
the slowly awakening but still largely submerged life of feeling, which
adds to the self-consciousness and awkwardness: the adolescent must
become acquainted with his or her body in its new form. This new con-
sciousness of the body is not lost later on, but as the consciousness or-
ganization evolves to a form capable of grasping the higher levels of the
human being, the physical body’s contribution gradually loses the domi-
nance in sentient life that it tends to exert in this first year.88

Seventh Grade: Methodology

The task of the curriculum is to integrate the children’s forces of
consciousness into the inner and outer physical conditions that they are
meeting. These forces are just beginning to be established, are still largely

150
in a condition of intuitive unity with the world and certainly do not yet
make up a formed and articulate vehicle for the child’s awareness. Al-
ready at this early stage, however, the child’s new powers of conscious-
ness can be called upon to extend the boundaries of the sense-percepti-
ble world, directing the physical body’s awareness into new realms and
illuminating its sense perceptions.
The forces of judgment and life of thinking, feeling and willing,
though not yet able to be called upon independently, should be appealed
to through what the teacher brings to stimulate and guide the develop-
ment of the newly awakening faculties. The theme of research and ex-
ploration, especially into the physical world, is one that can be applied
in a variety of areas.

Seventh Grade: Curriculum

The awakening of consciousness in the physical body leads to the
child’s experiences of his or her physical body being separate from that
of the rest of the world. On the one hand, attention needs to be trans-
formed from a simple awareness of one’s own physicality to the use of
this physicality through both an increase in crafts activities (woodwork,
metalwork, pottery, and so on) and movement (games, gymnastics, and
so on). On the other hand, the awareness of the outer world’s physicality
allows the child to overcome the static and isolated quality to which the
physical experience tends. The dynamic of the physical world lies in its
interconnections. Thus, from environmental studies beginning with the
physical and geological world and its principles, an answer can arise to
the first stage of isolation inherent in pre-adolescence: the isolation in-
herent in the physical body’s separateness from the rest of the physical
world. The understanding of the functioning of the physical body can
be deepened through a study of health and nutrition. This should in-
clude actual experiences, for example of what happens in the digestive
system when we change to a primarily sweet or a primarily savory diet;
breathing and pulse changes through exercise, the effects of chaotic or
orderly sense impressions on our thinking, and so forth.

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 This leads into an awareness of the greater conscious choice which
modern humanity has as to its relationship to its environment. Ques-
tions naturally arise then as to what physical conditions are actually
conducive to the human being’s well-being, i.e. how the physical and
sensory environment, how food, water, air, warmth and hygiene influ-
ence man’s health.
Historically, the human being adapted to the local physical condi-
tions in the various parts of the world where he lived; these outer con-
ditions thus influenced man’s physical appearance, lifestyle and even
consciousness. Stories of the time when man still lived in unity with his
physical conditions (from the Eskimo to the Andean mountain farmer)
are an important part of the year’s theme. Stories of the various races,
their physical environments, lifestyles and ways of perceiving the world
belong to this period not least because this ‘tribal’ life (including that of
the various European groups) began to come to an end with the expan-
sion into global trade and communication which the history lessons of
this year cover.
The children's desire to become conscious of and explore the physi-
cal world determines the principal thrust of the year’s curriculum. This
can begin with a study of the exploration and mapping of the physical
earth between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Age of Ex-
ploration, and thus a study of the physical geography of the continents
of the world, including topology and climate, distribution of resources,
and so forth. The development of trade between the continents and the
corresponding shifts in the economic and practical life of this period are
also important themes. The dawn of an independent consciousness in
the religious realm is expressed by the Reformation and in the scientific
realm by the birth of modern natural science. The latter, as an attempt to
penetrate the physical world with consciousness, is particularly relevant
for the year.
Geology is an especially important theme. This includes a study of
mining and natural resources connected with geography, the Age of
Exploration and colonization. Simple technological processes, e.g. of

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refining and developing natural resources (such as metals), belong to
this historical period: in chemistry, the investigation of phase transi-
tions89 and the processes of dissolving, crystallizing, and burning; in
physics, the practical technology of the production and transport of this
time (ships, the physical phenomena of electricity and magnetism, in
particular the role of the magnet for navigation), optics (the telescope
and eyeglass), mechanics and the acoustics of spaces. The principles by
which the sense organs function can be explored now, for example the
spiral of the ear, the tactile sense’s differentiated sensitivity, the eye’s
color and black and white perception.
The theme of acoustics connects with the musical curriculum and
leads into principles of musical organization (orchestra, chamber group,
solo) and the timbre of instruments. In mathematics, consciousness
should be brought to the underlying principles of practical and eco-
nomic life. This requires a study of positive and negative numbers, the
principles of bookkeeping and the use of equations in other practical
contexts as well. In handwork, more complicated articles can be made
to suit particular forms. An investigation into principles of clothing de-
sign, i.e. of suitable wear and tailoring, and an exploration of the devel-
opment, history and properties of (primarily natural)90 materials for
clothing is appropriate. In woodwork, useful tools for the kitchen and
workshop can be made in ways which are appropriate to the purposes
and suit the hand. Simple joints can be introduced.
The expression of experiences of the children’s feeling life, which
still principally lives in relation to the outer world (e.g., wish, wonder
and surprise), can be cultivated in creative writing. The artistic depic-
tion of the physical world can be mastered: a study of geometric draw-
ing and perspective and the use of light and dark (including on a toned
background), Rembrandt and Raphael. Black and white shaded draw-
ing can be introduced.
In eurythmy, the rod exercises are important in this year. Tone
eurythmy can begin working with the tones, speech eurythmy with the
sounds more consciously. Pace of movements can be consciously var-

153
ied: arm movements, movement through the space, and so forth. In
games and gymnastics, the more imaginative approach of the previous
years can begin to give way to ordered movements developing the will
of the child. Conventional gymnastics can be used to develop the mas-
tery of the physical body’s movement in space.

Second Stage of Development: Consciousness of the Life Organization

(14-15 year old)
The consciousness sheath begins to
incarnate into the realm of life and
rhythm. The child thus becomes more
aware of his or her own organic activity.
In particular, an awareness arises that he
or she experiences his or her own but not
others’ organic existence. This is the pre-
adolescent’s second experience of isola-
tion; he or she becomes aware that his or
her rhythmic, organic and formative ex-
perience is isolated from others. At the
same time, this organic activity is being transformed through the sen-
tient sheath, shaping the formative organization into a more receptive
vehicle for sentient experience. The changes brought about thereby re-
sult in new hormonal patterns, which show themselves in the growth
of the secondary sexual characteristics, the onset of menstruation and
the awakening of the sexual drive. The female life processes take on a
more rhythmic, the male a more continuous character, a difference which
also affects the soul life.
On the other hand, the sentient organization’s integrating more
deeply into the life and rhythmic organization results in the latter be-
coming much more susceptible and responsive to processes of conscious-
ness – above all to the feeling life. Thus, even fine changes in the child’s
feelings begin to affect the life processes (equally finely); this can be

154
seen, for example, in the reactions of the pulse, breathing, digestive sys-
tem, and even the circulation (e.g., blushing). Beginning at this time,
disturbances in the organic realm can often be the result of disturbances
in the soul life of the child. In addition, the child becomes much more
aware (and often self-consciousness) of his or her life processes and
rhythms.

Eighth Grade: Methodology

The faculty of judgment begins to be able to be called upon to evalu-
ate the rhythms and influences of the formative realm. Thus, not only
physical events and characteristics begin to be judged and evaluated,
but also the more subtle phenomena the lie behind the outer phenom-
ena: gesture, rhythm, formative activity. At the same time, the effect of
consciousness is to dissolve all that is traditional or habitual, all uncon-
scious, rhythmic repetition. (The story of the centipede who was asked
how she knew which limb to move next, and froze into immobility, sud-
denly unable to execute any motion whatsoever, is appropriate here.) It
is a pedagogical task to carry out this transformation of the habitual
into the realm of conscious awareness and/or choice.
If consciousness were to remain excessively bound to the lower bod-
ies, the emotions, desires and impressions of the child (and later adult)
would remain excessively tied to and dominated by organic processes
or physical conditions, rather than becoming sensitive to and expres-
sive of an independent life of soul. Thus, by the end of this stage, the
consciousness organization should be able to penetrate yet remain to a
certain extent independent of the life organization and the organic proc-
esses.
Larger research and practical projects, perhaps calling upon times
and resources outside of the normal school hours and conventional teach-
ing staff, can now be accomplished. However, the inspiration, direction
and supervision for these projects must still largely come from adults.

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Eighth Grade: Curriculum
A consciousness of the realm of formative process can now be fos-
tered. This will lead to a study of the formation of landscapes, e.g.
through tectonic conditions (continental plates, earthquake and volcano)
and weather. A more general study of water, e.g., rivers, ocean layers
and hydrodynamic, and air, e.g. winds, atmospheric layers and aerody-
namics, is appropriate at this time, so that the children can understand
how fish, bird, boat and airplane move through these media.
The work with landscape and weather leads naturally to an explo-
ration of the environmental conditions for plant growth and plant ecol-
ogy in the various zones of the world. A consciousness of how plant life
varies around the earth should be fostered: e.g. in forest zones, jungle,
grassland, and desert. Individual typical plants for various climactic
and geological zones can be presented. Wild and cultivated landscapes
can be compared, including the relative intensity of cultivation of pas-
ture land, cornfield, orchard and market garden. Composting is an im-
portant theme.
The subsequent study of photosynthesis in the plant will lead to an
exploration of the role of starches, sugars and fats in living organisms,
and further to the industrial processes which depend upon these sub-
stances (e.g. soap making and oil refining). This study leads physiology
and the formative development of the human organism. Anatomy (the
sense organs, inner organs, tissue layers and skeleton) can be under-
stood as arising from physiology, i.e. from the formative processes and
environmental influences which work together to form the given struc-
tures.
Parallel to exploring the natural world’s formative activity, the so-
cially transformative processes active in the history of the seventeenth
to twentieth centuries are examined. This Age of Revolution brought
enormous changes to society, government and concepts of human rights.
These resulted eventually in the modern political geography of the
world, which the children can now understand as resulting from his-

156
torical process, and to the particular modern civic life and governmen-
tal forms prevailing in the children’s own area. At the same time, stories
of the various nations of the world (e.g. Chinese, Russian, Maori and
Irish) give an image of lifestyles and social structures (including gov-
ernance and varied principles of human rights) in a world context.
The history of revolution can treat first the Industrial and then the
subsequent Communications (Information) Revolutions. The former in-
cludes the development of steam and internal combustion engines, the
industrialization of production from the cotton gin through the assem-
bly line, and modern automatic, robot-driven processes. The social
changes involved, such as the development of towns, loss of traditional
craftsmanship and the arising of a service-based economy, should not
be neglected. The Industrial Revolution’s dependence upon plant sources
of power (wood, coal, oil and natural gas) should be brought out. Mod-
ern power production (water, air, coal, oil and nuclear plants) and man-
kind’s progressive liberation from manual labor through the employ-
ment of machines are essential and essentially social elements of this
period’s transformations. The discoveries of modern times (e.g. vacci-
nations, genetics, radiation, semiconductors, the Internet, to give just a
few examples) must be given adequate historical place; even if a com-
prehensive scientific understanding is not yet possible for the pupils, a
true picture of the underlying processes can always be portrayed.
Arising out of the social consciousness developed by the stories of
various people of the world, principles of etiquette (the appropriate so-
cial behavior in a given context), including forms of social and business
correspondence can be explored. This is the appropriate age to con-
sciously grasp the forms considered appropriate to our day and age.
Literature explores the lyric form. The use of rhythm and metrics in
relation to mood can be actively explored.
In mathematics, relationships between multiple variables are ex-
plored (solving multiple equations). Loci, two-dimensional geometry
on planes and spheres, and the equations which correspond to various
geometric forms are further themes.

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 In music, rhythm is an important theme for the year; in addition,
multiple-part music, chamber ensembles and music as a social form
should be cultivated. The children should become familiar with the clas-
sical dance forms so that they can understand the context of the music
which makes use of these. This can lead later to the Latin-American
dance forms, which are still based on rhythm. The late-twentieth cen-
tury forms depending largely or solely on beat are not yet appropriate,
however.
In eurythmy, dance rhythms and movements should be practiced
(in conjunction with the music lessons). A review of Apollonian gram-
mar is now due. Interval forms can be introduced in tone eurythmy.
Veil painting and shaded drawing (now in color) can be explored in
art, and the transformation of a theme from one medium to another,
especially of black and white into colored expressions.
In handwork, pleats can be introduced into articles of clothing, cur-
tains, and other projects The use of sewing machines as well as appro-
priate care of garments (mending and washing) can be introduced. The
use of machines (saws, drills, and sanders), finishing and polishing can
be introduced in woodworking. Various rhythmic forms of corner-joints
can be introduced. Coil pots may be made in pottery lessons.
Crop rotation and the planting of mutually supportive neighboring
species are looked at in gardening. Greenhouses can be introduced.

Third Stage of Development: Consciousness of the Sentient Organization

(15-16 year old)
The preliminary stages of rebuilding and in-
tegrating with the lower two bodies are now com-
plete and the consciousness organization can be-
gin its own proper and characteristic evolution.
The child’s life of feeling, thought and will begin
to become much more conscious as inner and
subjective experiences, whereas previously these
were experienced both more objectively (as if

158
they were a part of the world, not belonging especially to oneself) and
more dreamily. An awareness of the personal nature of these experi-
ences awakens at this stage. This is the beginning of adolescence proper:
the awareness of possessing a subjective inner world.
The still impressionable sentient organization is not yet able to cre-
ate its own content, however; this is still chiefly built up out of impres-
sions from the outer world. The young adult can now begin, however,
to be increasingly conscious of these impressions and their effects upon
the inner life. The standards for the young person’s judgments – which
now examine the inner life91 critically as well – still tend to be received,
not developed independently.
The juvenile openness and playfulness that characterized the mid-
dle phase of childhood disappeared during the transitional years, giv-
ing way to stances that seem to protect rather than express the child’s
real self in these years: silliness, aggression, defensiveness, and so forth.
Only intermittent glimpses were available of the child’s real self. Like a
husk around the tremendous inner changes occurring during these years,
these transitional stances now begin to drop away, revealing the exist-
ence of a new, deepened and highly personal inner life of soul formed
in the long hidden depths.
The feelings that open up at this time lead to strong sympathies and
antipathies, desires and fears, and interests and indifference arising and
succeeding one another like waves of a turbulent sea. The adolescent
needs to gain experience now in how to live with these passions and
prejudices of his or her inner life. Fortunately, a new capacity for ab-
stract thinking and analysis becomes available simultaneously. It might
be said that passionate identification with and cold distance to experi-
ence are in a sense interdependent possibilities for relating to experi-
ence.
Movement between these (and other) polarities must be practiced
by the adolescent. The capacity must be cultivated of finding the bal-
anced middle through exploring the extremes. The capacity to analyze
the world of outer and inner experiences is a prerequisite to not being

159
subject to these worlds. This capacity must be developed in the forms of
analytic thinking, clear self-expression and practical capability. At the
same time, the capacities to consciously project oneself and identify one-
self with a situation must be practiced. Through practice, the former
becomes possible without cold isolation, the latter without heated pas-
sion.
The young person must learn to draw upon the inner world of ex-
perience in order to live and act in the outer world. Due to the nature of
this stage of development, experiences of the individual, subjective in-
ner life cannot yet be brought into relation with the true self or the ego.
They are characterized by fluctuating impressionability, whereas the true
individuality is characterized by a continuity of self-directed evolution
– a distinction which may well be irrelevant to a young person at this
stage of development but which should not be forgotten by those re-
sponsible for his or her development. At the same time, the genuine-
ness of the inner experience must be respected fully.

Ninth Grade: Methodology

Out of the chaos that results from the dissolution of all that is tradi-
tional or habitual, a new capacity for comprehending and ordering the
world begins to be established, a capacity that depends upon penetrat-
ing phenomena with conscious awareness. Understanding arises here
through an analytic approach.
The subjective life of feeling, judgments and the forces of sympathy
and antipathy must thus now be recognized and cultivated by lifting
them out of their negative forms (pure subjectivity, criticism, emotion-
ality). In order to do this, worthy standards for the awakening inner life
must be introduced in the form of ideals which can guide the burgeon-
ing critical faculties.
The adolescent must learn how the newly intense experiences of
sympathy and antipathy, fear and desire, and criticism and enthusiasm
may be experienced and expressed without being overwhelmed by them.

160
Practice in such expression, as well as experiencing how others give
voice to such experiences, is invaluable here, especially when these can
be given artistic form. The slogan of the 1970s and 1980s, ”the personal is
the political” tried to define subjective experience as being by its very
nature objective. The underlying intention here is valid: to recognize
the potentially objective significance of individual experience and to
return the sense of self-worth to the individual that modern science,
government and industry have taken from her or him.
Personal experience is only potentially objective, however. It is actu-
ally only through an essentially artistic process of transformation that
the accidental nature of a single individual’s experience can be given an
objective form. A work becomes artistic when it succeeds in giving an
objective form to subjective experience, thus raising the experience above
its own originally subjective nature. This attempt to give objective form
to subjective experience is a keynote for this year. The nature and origin
of human cultural life should be explored with the goal of giving the
children a basis for the understanding of their relation to the various
aspects of modern day culture.
Experience is articulated by giving it clear expression and especially
by exploring its polarities. Sharp contrasts can be cultivated now to the
point of finding a resolution out of contrasting extremes; thus does the
child’s hitherto relatively undifferentiated consciousness begin to take
form.

Ninth Grade: Curriculum

In literature, the dramatic form can be used to explore polarities of
experience. Through the essay form, critical judgments of history, lit-
erature and art can be expressed. A critical and more analytic treatment
of the subject matter by the teachers is appropriate as well. Media stud-
ies, such as how various news sources report an event, are appropriate.
A ‘show and substance’ lesson on advertising methods could be included
here.

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 The development of modern culture, which is based on articulate
consciousness and the capacity for individual judgment, thinking, and
life direction, is a central theme of the year. This can be traced beginning
with the fifteenth century with the rise of modern natural science, the
Renaissance and Reformation and the ensuing changes in religious, ar-
tistic and philosophical outlook and culture. A cultural anthropology
can be developed.
A more rigorous and experimental approach to the sciences can be
established now. The scientific developments of the last five-hundred
years can be approached now not just historically, but rigorously and
analytically, a theoretical foundation being developed out of the observ-
able phenomena. In particular, chemistry can be extended to the chem-
istry of sentient (animal) life: proteins, ethers and alcohols; this leads
into a study of the interaction of physiology and consciousness, includ-
ing a treatment of the effects of tobacco, caffeine, alcohol and other drugs.
The principles underlying modern technology are looked at in phys-
ics, establishing a sound understanding of mechanics and heat: for ex-
ample in the workings of locomotive and automotive engines; and acous-
tics, electricity and magnetism: for example in the telephone and elec-
tric motor.
In mathematics, combinatorics and probability are important top-
ics. Algebra can focus on flexibility in dealing with complex equations.
The geometry of simple figures can focus on constructions.
Ecological studies are extended to the animal kingdom. The interre-
lation between animal life and environmental conditions of landscape,
climate and local flora should be made clear (e.g. the adaptation of spe-
cies to mountain conditions). A global picture of the geographic distri-
bution of animal life on land and in the oceans can be built up. The
migration of species, including of bird life, and the contributions of ani-
mal life to pollination and the spread of plant species both play an im-
portant part here. Animal husbandry and the cultivation of fruit and
nut trees (including grafting) can be practically experienced. The con-
trast between manure and mineral fertilizers and the use of pesticides

162
and herbicides versus the role of birds and higher insects to destroy
pests and of soil building to reduce weeds should be drawn.
Drawing should explore the contrasts of darkness and light. Black
and white shaded drawing is an ideal medium for this work. Mood
may be explored as a theme. It is an excellent exercise to transform such
a mood into a painting (to go from a black and white to a color depic-
tion of such a theme). In music, the major and minor and moods in
music should be covered. Musical analysis can be begun: what elements
contribute to the life of a piece of music? How does it achieve the effects
that it has?
Weaving, basketry and raffia can be explored in handwork, wood-
work in utilitarian objects. Pottery can be introduced, for example build-
ing up pots and bowls from rings of clay. Work in copper can also result
in making bowls and similar objects.
Tone eurythmy work should be on the polarities of major and mi-
nor and consonance and dissonance. Thinking, feeling, and willing forms
can be introduced in speech eurythmy. The pupils can begin to learn to
use the elements of eurythmy in order to express the character of a piece;
the analysis of pieces according to mood, rhythm, and sounds begins
accordingly. Expansion and contraction should be especially cultivated
in this year.

Fourth Stage of Development: Consciousness of Individuality

(16-17 year old)
Consciousness becomes more individual-
ized, enabling the young person’s inner life
to develop a corresponding independence
from the outer world. At the same time, the
awareness of being an individuality through
possessing a unique consciousness awakens.
A feeling of isolation can arise; on the other
hand, the previously experienced need to take
up what is seen to be ‘normal’ – in fact, all

163
that belongs to a (peer) group consciousness – can thus drop away as
the young person begins to appreciate the uniqueness of his or her own
soul life as arising from his or her uniqueness as a human being. (If this
awareness does not arise now, a dependence upon a social milieu may
endure, or else a tendency to appear exaggeratedly different – an at-
tempt to differentiate oneself through outer show rather than the awak-
ening to the uniqueness of one’s own inner life – may develop.) Confi-
dence in one’s own judgments normally increases, and the young per-
son begins to more clearly distinguish feelings, thoughts and will im-
pulses arising from his or her inner life from reactions to outer circum-
stance.
A growing longing for a sense of direction for one’s own soul life,
linked with an increasing sense of responsibility, awakens. The ques-
tion of and interest in work in the outer world arises again (as it did in
the corresponding ego phase of the life body’s development, at nine to
ten years of age).

Tenth Grade: Methodology

With the individuation of the young person’s consciousness comes
the question: Who am I as a human being? This question arose during the
corresponding phase of the life body’s development. At that time, an
image of the human being was given as an answer; now, a consciousness
of the nature of the human being must be developed. The central task of
the year is thus to develop an understanding of the human being which
neither focuses one-sidedly on the bodily aspect of man nor on man’s
soul-spiritual nature, but presents both of these from the point of view
of ego experience, that is, as a unity.
Through the experience of the ego in the organization of conscious-
ness, logical thinking is now a faculty capable of being called upon and
trained. This is the faculty that has the potential to overcome the isola-
tion of the subjective quality of consciousness when the latter is medi-
ated through the lower bodies. Through logical thinking, objective, uni-
versal contents of experience are reached. A certain one-dimensionality

164
of reasoning is characteristic of this step of development and must be
cultivated in this year. By this is meant the capacity to deal positively
with aspects of the world where there is a single right answer. In con-
trast with social, emotional and cultural issues, for example, or when
considering living organisms, the non-organic physical world is such
an aspect of the world. To give an example well worth cultivating in
this year, one is either punctual or not in the physical world, whatever
emotional and social issues may be simultaneously at play. The capac-
ity to deal with this realm with precision and accuracy is vital in order
to take hold of practical life and responsibilities, and thus must be
practiced now.
The pupil’s growing independence of judgment must be met with
increasing respect over this year. Simultaneously, the young person must
learn to recognize and respect the independence of others.
The human being’s relation to the outer and inner worlds of experi-
ence becomes a theme; this is a year of the young person’s becoming
conscious of having such a dual relationship. A greater exposure to the
larger world is appropriate at this age, which is the traditional time to
enter apprenticeships or to ‘come out’ into society. The young person is
learning to meet new impressions with a degree of confidence and in-
dependence in and through such encounters.
Deeper experiences of work thus begin to be fruitful and important
for the child’s development. This represents the engaging of the will
(the earthly expression of the ego) to contribute to the world’s future.
Whether in more sustained situations (e.g. apprenticeships or after school
and weekend work) or more exploratory periods (e.g. sessions of work
experience), the opportunity to find oneself by working and taking re-
sponsibility for one’s deeds in the world is vital at this time.

Tenth Grade: Curriculum

One of the central tasks of this year is to awaken the young per-
son’s consciousness of man’s ecological responsibility. This will include
tracing the history of how – originally out of religious impulses (from

165
earliest historical times through, for example, the work of the Cistercians
in the twelfth and thirtienth centuries) – activity in the outer world was
organized to be ecologically and socially responsible, healthy for the
soul and fulfilling to the world. Special attention should be given to
agriculture in this regard, but many other areas of man’s work and re-
sponsibility for the world may be included. The situation of the present
day gives ample room for contrast and must be thoroughly represented.
A look at the human influence upon the landscape can lead into study-
ing folk architecture in its connection with the landscape, the polarity of
village and town, and urban studies.
This ecological sense can be carried right through into the will,
into practical land work. The subjects of composting and soil science
grow out of the cultivation of a responsibility for the earth.
A capacity to grasp the outer world in clear consciousness is nec-
essary, not least in order to uphold our responsibility for the earth. Sur-
veying, map making and technical drawing belong here. A study of the
earth’s geological formations (culminating in the mountain cross of the
world) and mineralogy follow. The awakening of clear thinking is fos-
tered in mathematics by the study of visual proof and theorem, of Car-
tesian and descriptive geometry and especially of logic, which can be
developed as far as Boolean algebra and simple computer program-
ming.92 The study of abstract solid figures such as the Platonic solids is
appropriate here. In physics, mechanics and optics are appropriate. The
optical principles of photography lead to the chemical principles of pho-
tography and inorganic chemistry in general. Acid-base reactions, salts
and the role of heat in chemical reactions, including phase change, as
well as the principles of the combination of substances in fixed propor-
tions should be covered.
Understanding man’s history and development is equally im-
portant for this year. A review of the history of man’s progressive
individuation from earliest historical times to its culmination at the tran-
sition from Greek to Roman civilization should be presented with an

166
emphasis on a clear comprehension of the historical facts and on an
understanding of motifs which recur in history (e.g. the balance between
the striving for unity and empire on the one hand and that for
individuation and independence on the other). The nature of historical
documents should be presented.
The study of man is a very important subject in this year, whereby
man’s anatomy, physiology, psychology and spiritual nature must be
presented in a unified picture. A comprehensive exploration of man’s
being, balancing all of these aspects, is required here. A brilliant and
eminently usable example of this is Steiner’s presentation (in The Study
of Man) of the connection of sympathy and antipathy with blood and
nerve processes.
Out of the study of man as an individual being, consciousness is
thus extended in four directions:

Into spiritual experience

Systematic thinking, logic, cause and effect

Into the past of Study of the Human Being Into the future of
social experience Unity of body, soul and spirit social experience
History of man’s Practical work
individuation Precision and
The development of responsibility
language and literature

Into earthly experience

Ecological responsibility
Surveying the earth
The laws of the physical world

167
 The theme of the individual ego freeing itself from the group-soul
consciousness is taken up in literature. Particularly appropriate exam-
ples relating to this theme are the Iliad, Nibelungen saga (Gudrun) parts
of the Arthurian legends, and the story of Job. Biography is an appro-
priate theme.
The expressive depiction of events in history and of natural history
should be cultivated as a literary form: excerpts from historical and natu-
ral-historical writers can be taken up. The origin of the mother tongue
(in English, including Chaucer) and of its grammar belongs here; the
latter should now be clearly grasped. The history of the development of
language and literature are closely linked to the development of the
human ego. Metric and poetic forms should be brought to conscious-
ness, so that the pupils obtain a feel for the nature of and can grasp
these. Clear speaking should be cultivated, speech exercises can play an
important role, especially in this year.
In each of the various artistic faculties, the laws that underlie artistic
form should be explored. In the fine arts, this includes composition,
color theory and perspective. The history of the depiction of the human
figure should be covered and exact observation and drawing from na-
ture emphasized (through to perspective).
Music lessons can explore musical motif and the laws of harmony;
mastery of an instrument should be emphasized. A step away from the
orchestral player experience is made in two directions. On the one hand,
the elements of conducting should be covered and experience gained
here. At the same time, work on chamber music should be emphasized.
In eurythmy, the depiction of musical and poetic forms should be
covered. The movements corresponding to grammatical parts of speech
belong to this year. Work on duos, trios and quartets may be cultivated.
In gymnastics, balance and standing well on the earth should be em-
phasized. Throwing the discus, ‘Indian’ wrestling (standing foot to foot
with contact limited to one hand) and traditional gymnastics, which
cultivate orientation in space, are all appropriate.

168
 Practical work may include typography and printing, iron work and
more precise copper work (for example, making boxes). Carpentry
should cover the plumb and the square, the making of joints, and gen-
erally working to precise measurements. Tailoring is of great value in
this year.
A social practice period involving responsibility for the earth, such
as on a farm, is very appropriate for this year. A building apprentice-
ship might be another alternative. The experience of cooperation in work
is especially important.

Fifth Stage of Development: Imagination

(17-18 year old)
At this stage the imaginative forces are
no longer passively living in images pro-
vided by the outer world, but begin to blos-
som into an inner faculty, an independent
creative power capable of entering into the
world with new vigor. This creative-imagi-
native faculty builds upon the clear, logical
and exact comprehension belonging to ego-
consciousness and practiced in the previous
stage of development and develops beyond
this to become capable of actively following the transformative and crea-
tive processes at work in the world. An understanding of phenomenol-
ogy and metamorphosis (i.e. of how a single underlying
phenomenological principle manifests in various stages and forms) is
now possible.
This new faculty is not limited to an inner activity in the compre-
hension of metamorphic processes, but is also capable of engaging in
new, creative outer deeds. If allowed to unfold properly, the young per-
son’s creative forces can now become free not only from their bondage
to impressions from the outer world, but also from the influences of the

169
lower organizations, of their lower self. This inner, imaginative faculty
opens out into the surrounding world, seeking to express itself in crea-
tive activity in this world and to shape its environment on all levels.

Eleventh Grade: Methodology

Having achieved a certain capacity for an analytic approach in the
ninth grade and for systematic, logical thinking in the tenth grade, the
intellectual clarity already gained is now extended to aspects of the world
which require real mobility in thinking: metamorphosis and develop-
ment of an imaginative nature. This is a step from the somewhat ‘one-
dimensional’ view of reality cultivated in the tenth grade, which is ap-
propriate where there is truly one right answer, into areas where the
point of view is determinate for the answer achieved.
Especially important at this time is a move from examining indi-
vidual themes in any given subject to examining how underlying mo-
tifs develop and connect seemingly separate aspects of the subject, for
example, how certain patterns of history can be seen to resurface regu-
larly. Such development and metamorphosis is especially characteristic
of the living world. An imaginative approach to phenomena is needed
to comprehend them in this way.
At the same time, new forces of creativity and an increased interest
in self-expression naturally unfold now, apparent in newly creative ap-
proaches to tasks and an increase of interest in reaching out to take up
challenges which require imagination and inner activity. Whether the
young person’s imagination and creativity are more artistically, practi-
cally or scientifically oriented – and these differences become increas-
ingly apparent – these new inner possibilities must be met with new
outer challenges that call upon imaginative solutions and offer new
freedoms to exercise creative self-expression. The direction of a pupil’s
interests and talents will become increasingly apparent at this age, and
a certain potential for increased specialization or depth becomes neces-
sary to offer in order to do justice to each pupil’s capacities.

170
Eleventh Grade: Curriculum
Botany can now be approached out of a sense for the living meta-
morphosis which a plant represents. Comprehending the plant king-
dom demands a mobile imagination and flexible thinking in order to
grasp the dynamic and interactive interrelation of the parts with the
whole (e.g. through following leaf metamorphoses). The transforma-
tions implied in the plant’s evolution from the one-celled prototypical
plant, itself a miniature universe, through the primitive plant types up
to the monocotyledons and dicotyledons is also an important theme. A
systematic botany of the lower plants should be built up, including veg-
etative propagation. An understanding of the interrelation of the parts
of the organism and the interaction between cell and organism should
be built up (this would include, for example, Spemann’s work on cell
differentiation).
The interaction of cosmos and earth, for example through a study
of biorhythms, water and weather is a theme in its own right; this re-
quires the reintroduction of a certain amount of astronomy, as well. This
study can be carried forward into a look at imaginative images of the
earth from a spiritual perspective; such sources as Pythagorean thought,
American Indian mythology and contemporary research can all play a
part here. The life or etheric geography of the earth is another impor-
tant aspect of this broader look at the earth: how the forces of earth,
water, air, warmth or fire, light, sound or rhythm and life manifest in
the various regions of the world. The economic, social and cultural con-
tributions of the continents and regions of the world can be covered in
this context.
A study of plant processes of photosynthesis leads into organic chem-
istry. The nature of compounds can be understood through investigat-
ing the processes that they stimulate or in which they are involved. An
example of this is fermentation and pickling (vinegars and alcohols).
Beginning similarly from the way in which they reveal themselves in
processes and interrelationship, the fundamental types of elements (al-

171
kali metals, noble gases, and so forth) can be described, through which
a meaningful (and essentially musical) understanding of the Periodic
Table can arise. This is true to our experience, which does not reveal the
constitutive elements of objects directly; the latter are discovered only
through becoming aware of typically manifesting processes (e.g. oxida-
tion).
Electromagnetic and radiation phenomena manifest neither as wave
nor as particle and can thus only be grasped imaginatively and
phenomenologically; these belong to this year as well. An understand-
ing of modern technology such as radio and television can then be in-
troduced. Semiconductor behavior can be similarly phenomenologically
described, and their uses to implement the logic developed previously
(i.e. in logic circuits) explored, thus fostering a basic understanding of
how computing equipment operates.93
In mathematics we can look at themes such as projective geometry,
infinity, counterspace and spherical geometry. The reversal of the con-
ventional point-centered approach into the periphery is an imaginative
step that must be paralleled by an emphasis on building inner pictures
of the phenomena dealt with; otherwise, the tendency of such phenom-
ena to disappear out of consciousness will dominate. Analytic geom-
etry, or the interrelationship of algebraic formula and visual image, is a
central theme of the year. This will include trigonometry and conic sec-
tions.
Phenomena of water and air movement can be observed and de-
scribed; the work of Schwenk and Wilkes should be included in the
teacher’s preparation in this field. The study of hydrodynamics and aero-
dynamics leads to a consideration of weather and climate as well as
climatic geography of the world. (It is valuable for the pupils to have
drawn maps of the world from as many aspects as possible by the end
of their school time: physical, climatic, economic, political and cultural
maps.) Map projections may be introduced, thus developing an imagi-
native faculty in geometry and geography.

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 Phenomena of perception are introduced as a study of practical psy-
chology, which continues with a look at memory and imagination and
at the soul qualities of thinking, feeling and willing. This study culmi-
nates with phenomena of self-consciousness and the human ego. A sur-
vey of psychological thought can illuminate how various approaches
each cultivate a special focus on one level of the human being’s life: the
behaviorists explain everything through human instinct, Freudian psy-
chology through the drives, Jung through images of the unconscious
soul life, Maslow through the ego development, Frankl and Lievegoed
through spiritual unfolding.
This brings us to the creative individual, a theme in its own right.
An emphasis on the achievements of great individuals in history and in
all of the arts (music, poetry, painting, ad so forth) is appropriate. In
literature, biography continues to be an important theme. Central here
is the question of character development. The novel is the literary mode
that takes the developing individual as its theme; this can be said to
have had its origin in the first saga of the developing individual: Parsifal.
Romantic poetry is another expression of the subjective individual and
should be treated in this year. Creative writing should be fostered. Im-
aginative devices such as figuration and tropology should be explored.
In fact, creative work in all of the arts should be fostered. In paint-
ing, color perspective should be developed and free painting cultivated
out of this principle. Portraits and busts can be painted and modelled.
In eurythmy one can work on an individually expressive style and so-
los. The musical curriculum explores the expressive medium of the voice,
the relation of text and setting (e.g. in Handel and Schubert), culminat-
ing in solo song and composition. In both painting and music, the evo-
lution of style through the great masters should be covered (including
the relationship between biography and artistic creation). By the end of
the year, the pupils should have the widest possible grasp of their own
cultural heritage. Conducting can be continued with the emphasis now
on the conductor’s individual expression of a piece. The evolution of

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the cultural position of the arts can be traced from their origin as reli-
gious expressions through their use for social functions into their present
position of isolation from the rest of life (in museums and concert halls).
In history, Rome’s development out of a purely personal, egoistic
element (which can be shown in its degeneration through Nero) through
the meeting with Christianity, as well as the following development of
European civilization through the forces of both challenge and renewal
brought by the migrating tribes, should be covered. The rise of Islam,
Charlemagne and the monastery movement are important themes: How
did these affect the cultural life right through to today? Out of the split
between the Byzantine and Roman churches, the Eastern tendency to
preserve the cultural heritage can be contrasted with the Western ten-
dency to generate new forms. The lessons should emphasize the evolv-
ing cultural impulses, and the resulting political history can often serve
to illuminate the cultural developments.
In woodwork, musical instrument making is introduced; creative
projects using already acquired skills are also appropriate. For the move-
ment curriculum, a liberation from the earth is the theme: javelin, springs,
leaps and generally achieving lightness and imagination in movement.
Further, a social practice period involved with helping individuals (e.g.
the aged, poor, handicapped, drug addicts or prisoners) is very appro-
priate in this year.

Sixth Stage of Development: Inspiration

(18-19 year old)
The inner life which was first brooding and
developing, then seeking to express itself, is
now mature enough to look out into the world
with interest for what can arise through inter-
action with (and to recognize the existence of a
corresponding fullness of soul life in) its envi-
ronment. Thus, a step is now made to an inter-
est in genuine mutuality of interaction; a social

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interest develops. This enables a deepening of conversations, as there is
now a genuine, objective interest in others. A new sensitivity to and
interest in both the outer world and other people awaken. What makes
others do what they do, feel what they feel, think what they think? What
are they really experiencing? There is interest in deeper motives and
impulses; the basis for empathy is laid here.
The young person begins to focus on and be capable of compre-
hending interrelationships in the world and their creative function, the
nature of social interaction and the relationship of the individual to the
community, becoming more capable of placing the expressions of be-
ings into the larger context in which they arise or arose. The develop-
ment of a sense for these interrelationships and for how the world’s
expressions arise from them requires a step in consciousness beyond
the imagination needed to comprehend individual creativity. There is a
broadening and opening of consciousness through expanding the focus
from the apparent source of an expression to experience what manifests
in the periphery as the origin of and/or a response to this. To hold the
original expression and the experienced context in relationship is to sense
the processes which bring these into mutual relationship; the conscious-
ness which is able to accomplish this grasps the mutually inspiring co-
operation of the world’s beings. This is an experience of the breathing
process which takes place and links beings with one another and with
their own expressions.
In this sense, in order to grasp that which lives (invisibly) in interre-
lationships between people (this is equally true in phenomena outside
the social realm), it is necessary to build up a picture of the individuals
(or individual aspects) and all that becomes visible through them, as far
as a conscious and an imaginative penetration of the situation can reach.
It is then, however, necessary to release this picture of all that is appar-
ent and to allow an impression of what is not apparent to arise inwardly.
It is the negative space that is experienced here: not the social life and
deeds but the space between these that has called them forth (the social

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atmosphere). Graciousness, especially but not only manifested in social
intercourse, flowers.

Twelfth Grade: Methodology

When consciousness moves into the sphere of interrelationships in
the world and their creative function, an awareness awakens of the realm
between, of the space that allows free interrelationships and of what hap-
pens in this space. The social environment and the relationship of the
individual to the community begin being experienced much more con-
sciously. Integration into the community as an individual, i.e. while re-
taining one’s individual nature, becomes a theme.
The faculty which is needed to creatively penetrate the underlying
interrelationships and expressive revelation of creative processes can
be called the faculty of inspiration. This goes beyond the dynamic activ-
ity of conscious imagination. Conversation itself becomes an event, of-
ten a pleasure; the dialectic method (learning through directed conver-
sation) could be said to have its most natural place in this year.

Twelfth Grade: Curriculum

In the previous year of development, the place of the community
and environment in the young person’s consciousness were still largely
that of potentially receptive spaces into which the developing individual
creativity could radiate, or that of potential sources of stimuli to this
individual creative development. The relationship with these was thus
of secondary importance to their role in individual development. The
pupils’ consciousness wakens now to this relationship between the in-
dividual and the surrounding community and environment. This can
find a direct expression in the curriculum through historical explora-
tion: the history of social forms, governmental forms and human rights.
Here it must be shown how these forms – in fact, the whole relationship
of the individual to the community – were first determined by and later
grew up out of religious and cultural impulses. The first harbingers of

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an independent social and rights life arose in Greece. They came to a
fuller flowering in Rome and during the Middle Ages, then became
present questions in the social and political revolutions of the late eight-
eenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Various patterns in the evolution of societies can be discovered, e.g.
how each civilization goes through a period of initial formation (usu-
ally accompanied by a semi-mythological foundation story, e.g. Homer
and Virgil), a middle period of stable political forms and a flowering of
culture, and a closing period of transition or decay. In addition, the na-
ture of various societies, both of the present day and over mankind’s
evolutionary development, should be considered. A comparative study
of civilizations, or sociology, arises naturally through this evolutionary
element, where it can be clear that various civilizations concentrate or
have concentrated on particular elements in mankind’s development,
and that such past elements continue to work on in modern cultures. A
feeling for the fact that all current forms of government and civilization
have grown out of this evolution, and must continue to evolve in order
to meet future needs, can be developed in the pupils. The study of po-
litical institutions and human rights is part of the social realm here. A
look at Lievegoed’s work on developing institutions and an exploration
of the impulse for a threefold social order are almost unavoidable here.
Social practice in service to another social context (for example, to an-
other culture present in one’s own country or to another country) is
extremely appropriate to build upon the wider social awareness.
Continuing this theme of relationship, dramatic literature should
be studied. Dramatic encounters can be explored in free improvisation
(including the work of (Mikhail Chekhov) and the relationship of litera-
ture to society explored (e.g. in Ibsen and Anton Chekhov). The drama
of Faust is an enormous exploration of the individual and society and
can take a central place in the work of the year.
In general, in literature and the arts, a shift takes place from the fo-
cus on the connection between an artist’s work and biography to that

177
between the work and the larger social and historical context. Interrela-
tionships between philosophical or social movements and the arts – e.g.
Brunetto Latini and the artists of the Renaissance – and mutual contact
and interplay between the arts – e.g. painting a musical impression
(Kandinsky, Klee) or composing a visual impression (Handel, Skriabin)
– can be explored.
In music, a feeling for the interaction of musical elements in deter-
mining style should be developed (Bach, Beethoven and Bartok). Group
improvisation can be explored fruitfully. Eurythmy could be said to come
into its own during this year. More ambitious pieces may be explored
now, whereby an awareness of the whole group is especially to be culti-
vated. Choreography may arise through mutual improvisation or ex-
ploration of a piece.
In handwork, leatherwork and shoe making can emphasize rhyth-
mic elements. In metalwork, blacksmithing should develop a feel for
the look and the sounds of metals at various heats (cherry-red heat, and
so on).
In general, more ‘musical’ relationships are explored this year, i.e.
relationships where rhythm, pattern and interaction come to the fore. In
mathematics, the relationship between geometric forms and the math-
ematical equations which describe these can be brought out, so that a
feeling develops for the correspondences or interactions between these
two very different ways of presenting the same phenomena. Set theory
is extended to include ordered series and limits, out of which the basic
elements of calculus arise. Transformations from planar geometry to
curved surfaces (e.g. spherical geometry) lead to geodesy and math-
ematical astronomy. The latter links with optics. In optics, how images
arise and are transformed through lens and mirror and phenomena of
refraction and dispersion can be covered.
The reciprocal relationship of plants with their environment, i.e. for
pollination, also belongs to the year. A plant can be understood through
picturing the effects of the elements – sun, rain, wind and earth – inter-

178
acting with the seed and the metamorphic principle of the growing or-
ganism. This can give rise to an accurate, imaginative picture of the
plant’s growth and being up to a certain point. The principle of leaf
transformation alone can only go as far as the sepal, however. The de-
velopment of a blossom can no longer be understood as simply a prod-
uct of the direct interaction of the elements and the metamorphic prin-
ciple inherent in the plant.94 An intangible element is actually already
present here. The blossom arises as something new out of the plant’s
interrelation with insect life, with other plants of the species, and so
forth; one could even say that in the blossom, the plant is ‘inspired’ to
create something which goes beyond that which is predictable from the
rest of its being. This study of the higher, or flowering, plants leads to
genetics in connection with plant and animal breeding: maintenance of
a strain or breed, cross-fertilization, hybridization and genetic modifi-
cation of organisms. The corresponding issues for humanity and for the
environment can naturally be included here.
Similarly, to comprehend animal existence, a picture of the animal
and the elements of its environment alone do not suffice. Something
intangible that lives, for example, between the individual animals of a
herd, flock, and so on, (with domesticated animals, between animals and
their keepers, as well) also plays a significant role in determining their
existence. Systematic zoology can be treated out of this awareness of
the larger ecological context. A thorough overview of evolutionary zo-
ology is appropriate; out of this and the studies in botany, palaeontol-
ogy and a study of the evolution of the geological layers of the earth
naturally proceed.

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Seventh Stage of Development: Intuition
(19-20 year old)
Outer reality now begins to be perceived
clearly in its own right (i.e. unmixed with
other levels of experience) and thus takes on
a much greater significance now for the
young person, who, especially during the
middle years of this phase of development,
has been living to a significant extent in a
world dominated by inner experience. The
young person’s attention turns to meeting the
realities of the outer world. A corresponding
openness and interest in how one can serve or find one’s place in the
world develops. No longer is the emphasis for the young person on
what he or she is becoming, but rather on what potential the context or
environment offers for development. A much more receptive attitude
begins to show itself. Interest, receptivity and perceptive awareness for
the world are thus characteristic to this stage of development.
At the same time, the form of consciousness can now achieve an
awareness of the essential quality or nature of being as it exists in the
world. Apart from their manifestation, i.e. beyond the inner activity,
interrelationship and expressions of beings, beings can be recognized in
their own right.
The young person can thus meet what is literally essential in the
world: the agents which are the origin of the phenomena or expressions
which have hitherto come to consciousness. It requires an act of will in
order to experience being as pure potential, i.e. stripped of all but the
inner potency out of which all else arises. Only thereby can conscious-
ness grasp another being and, in grasping it, inwardly unite with it.
This is then an experience of intuitive unity whereby one’s one being is
not lost, but rather fulfilled by the meeting. At this level of existence, all
being is an unrecognized part of one’s own being. Thus an aspect of

180
existence which is also a hitherto unrecognized part of one’s own exist-
ence can be recognized and affirmed in the world and in oneself simul-
taneously.
Through the new possibilities for the organization of consciousness,
an experience can arise of unity with the greater whole and of the crea-
tive being (or beings) which is (or are) at the origin of all that exists: an
absolutely non-denominational but essentially religious experience. The
faculty of intuition is required to rise to this comprehension of the ori-
gin of the world in the creative beings which work within it. Through
this faculty, the full reality of the human being can also be comprehended
for the first time. This awareness of the nature of being at the origin of
existence is the prelude to self-knowledge.
This year, as the last when the pupil should still be largely embed-
ded in the group destiny of the class, school community and family, has
the potential to form a transition to the fully individual path that begins
with the onset of adulthood in the following year. The awakening of
interest in and a dawning awareness of one’s own concrete life destiny
are characteristic. The latter shows itself most immediately in the ques-
tion of the path of life after school, a path connected with a fully indi-
vidualized ego, which (only) now begins to ripen into a concrete answer.

Thirteenth Grade: Methodology

The student, nearly an adult now, must make a transition to an in-
dependent direction in life, with not only confidence but also prepara-
tion and capacities in place for the individual’s future direction. This is
thus a year directed towards the future; towards the tasks ahead both
for the world and for the individual. A sense of culmination is also ap-
propriate. Independent work and motivation are definitely to be ex-
pected, as well as the beginning of a sense of responsibility for the di-
rection of one’s own life. In many ways, this should be a year of en-
abling what the young man or woman wills to happen, of supporting
and helping to clarify this will and of giving the foundation that is re-

181
quired for an adult life in today’s world. [In Europe and in Canada many
Waldorf schools have a thirteenth year prior to the taking of national
examinations (ed).]

Thirteenth Grade: Curriculum

The young person’s consciousness turns now to the active princi-
ples at work in world and human development. In history, the nature
and interplay of conservative, progressive and humanistic impulses in
various epochs and regions of the world should be the starting point.
This can be followed by examining the special contributions of the peri-
ods of history and various regions of the world, e.g. how religious im-
pulses and a tendency towards unity, or even homogeneity, arise in the
East; social impulses and cooperation develop out of the Center; tech-
nological advances and differentiation, even competition, are charac-
teristic of the West; impulses of West and East intermingle on the Pacific
Rim. Another example is the North’s tendency towards individuation,
abstraction and industrialization vs. the South’s tendency towards com-
munity, concrete experience and agriculture. A spiritual history and
geography of the world thus arises. Economic history (from the barter
economy to globalization) and the structure and evolution of the cur-
rent world economy should be especially emphasized.
Each human being has, however, an individual relationship to all of
the above-mentioned spiritual factors, independent of all geographical
or historical considerations. A comprehension must arise of how each
animal species incorporates a particular form of soul life,95 each type of
plant incorporates particular growth forces and patterns and each min-
eral incorporates a particular physical structure. The human being, in
contrast, is an individuated microcosm of all possibility, his evolution
continuing from where all of the realms of nature leave off, i.e. in the
realm of spiritual or inner evolution leading to self-determination and
inner freedom. (Excerpts from Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom may be
invaluable here.)

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 On the basis of this understanding, human appearance, habits and
gifts can be comprehended as being principally the result neither of forces
of heredity nor of influences from the environment, though each of these
makes a contribution to the corresponding level of man’s being, but
rather comprehended as a garment woven to serve for the current life
out of the resources of the past and in order to prepare for and develop
into the future (i.e. of the human being as an evolving spiritual indi-
viduality) reincarnation and karma.
The search for one’s own task in life is intimately connected with an
awareness of the task of one’s own time; each of us has incarnated at
this particular moment in history in order to play a part in this larger
task as well. A study of the unique goals and accomplishments of each
historical period – as well as of the tasks of each that remained unsolved,
awaiting a future resolution – is essential to a comprehension of our
own time’s special tasks. This close link with and transition to the dis-
covery of one’s individual task may well lead to a specialization of needs,
depending on whether university entrance exams, a deepening of artis-
tic experience or the mastery of the rudiments of practical or social work,
for example, are best suited to prepare the individual for the next phase
of life, that of the journeyman.
A special topic for the year is medicine (health and illness), explor-
ing the constitutions, temperaments and soul-tendencies. Sclerotic and
inflammatory conditions should be touched on. The human immune
system is of special interest at this time.
In chemistry, processes of annihilation and re-formation should be
explored. Warmth processes and the role of hydrogen are particularly
suitable topics. In physics, astrophysics, thermodynamics and entropy
as well as the contemporary developments commonly known as chaos
theory should be entered into. In mathematics, the work with calculus
can continue and complex numbers and elementary number theory be
introduced.

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 In literature, the novel should be treated from the point of view of
destiny (e.g. stumbling blocks and bridges encountered) and the under-
lying vision of human nature. Contemporary trends in literature can be
illuminated from this standpoint. Tolstoy's Resurrection might be an
appropriate work.
In music, orchestral playing should be cultivated. The composer’s
intent should be explored. Conducting – and all music making – may be
practiced as the art of bringing the reality of the music into sounding
tone. The origin of the tonal system may be reviewed and new tonal
systems and musical developments explored.
An overview of the expressive character of all the arts is now due:
how architecture expresses laws of the physical world (structural laws
of support and bearing); sculpture expresses the life nature as form and
stilled movement; painting expresses the soul nature out of the realm of
color ; music expresses experience in the realm of ego through tone;
poetry and literature express a spiritual consciousness (so that meaning
is unavoidable here, in contrast to the visual arts and music, where it is
essentially a foreign element); eurythmy expresses spiritual life in all
these realms; social artistry allows the spiritual nature of the human
being its true expression. The capacity to gain an understanding of a
topic through a co-operative effort, whereby each contribution is poten-
tially a stage or building stone in the understanding to be achieved,
should be cultivated in the pupils.

IDEALS AND SOUL DEVELOPMENT

There is a fundamental difference between the sentient organiza-
tion’s perceptions and inner, soul experience. The sentient organization
is stimulated by impressions from the physical body’s sense organs, from
the life body’s organs sensitive to formative qualities and from its own
organs of sentience. In the soul, by contrast, impressions are not bound
to the form in which they are received from the lower organizations.
Such impressions are merely the raw material out of which the soul can
form content appropriate to its own evolving nature.

184
 During the phase of life dedicated to the development of the sen-
tient organization, however, the soul has not yet gained the independ-
ence from the lower bodies – in particular from the sentient organiza-
tion – that it will achieve later. What will be accomplished later by way
of soul development from within still depends upon help from the child’s
environment. Only through such outside influence can the sentient or-
ganization be developed into a structure capable of serving as a bearer
of a soul itself capable of developing towards ever maturity and objec-
tivity of experience. A significant pedagogical task of this phase of life
thus consists of cultivating, developing and refining the manifold expe-
riences rich in sentient content that life brings during this phase of de-
velopment in order to bring these into a form appropriate for an objec-
tively significant inner life.
During the two preliminary stages of development of this phase of
life, while the soul organization remains in a preparatory condition, it
cannot be approached as directly as is possible once its proper develop-
ment commences (with the third developmental stage). Thus, during
these years the child’s sentient experience cannot yet be appealed to
directly, for it remains largely unconscious (and should do so, for its
activity and forces are still needed in order to transform the physical
and life bodies). What is to be brought for the child’s consciousness will
have to appeal to these unconsciously developing sentient experiences
through the fully developed and awake image consciousness achieved
during the previous phase of development, bearing significance for the
new, sentient experience of the child without yet calling upon the child
to become fully conscious of this experience. Material which mediates
between the child’s awakening forces of consciousness and the life or-
ganization’s receptivity to image is thus appropriate. Examples of this
are stories that include elements drawn from the kinds of sentient expe-
rience now arising for the child and conscious learning that incorpo-
rates the kind of descriptive and anecdotal content that appeals to the
imagination.

185
 Similarly, the capacity to make judgments is rapidly developing dur-
ing this transitional time, but the capacity to form one’s own judgments
properly is not yet present. Thus, the teacher(s) must find ways to bring
descriptions or experiences of the world that allow judgment to arise
directly, i.e. through the description or experience itself, without a judg-
ment being imposed upon or demanded of the child.
It is a delicate balance, as all who have to do with children at this
time of life will testify. Above all, the latter must no longer be treated as
young children, for a threshold has been crossed, and yet nor should
they be treated as if they had already achieved a maturity that will only
arise over the course of this phase of development.
Once the development of consciousness proper has begun, which
generally corresponds with the beginning of secondary school,96 the
subjective nature of the newly awakening sentient experience can be
explored. Previously, various impressions made upon various members
of the class were experienced as aspects of an objective reality. (‘The
knight was brave’, ‘the knight was foolish’, etc.) Now, the interest natu-
rally turns more towards the personal content of these experiences. (‘I
feel he was brave, I admire him’; ‘I feel he was foolish, I disdain him.’)
Personal experience, which still lies strongly in a polarity between sym-
pathy and antipathy, can be developed and explored.
In the following stage of development (the fourth, corresponding
to the tenth grade or the sixteen-year-old), objective capacities are de-
veloped through accurate observation and logical thinking. Objective
aspects are refined from inner experience in the simplest realms of the
outer and inner worlds. In the final stages of the development of the
sentient organization, successively more challenging levels of the realms
of nature as well as of inner experience are taken up. Whereas logical
thinking is accomplished in the preceding stage, the processes of thinking
can become subjects in themselves (along with the plant world) during
the fifth stage, the processes of feeling (and the animal world) in the
sixth stage, of willing (and the human being) in the seventh stage of this
phase of development.

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EDUCATION THROUGH IDEALS
There is a second realm of pedagogical responsibility during this
entire phase of development. We have seen (in the chapter on “The Na-
ture of the Human Being”) that impressions from a higher sphere light
up in the adult’s soul life, taking the form there of ideals such as truth,
justice, equality, love, freedom and brotherhood. These are not abstrac-
tions but images of a reality as true and as powerful as the outer, physi-
cal world and capable of giving orientation to our experiences and our
lives, while only under their influence can understanding become wis-
dom. History teaches us their power; inspire a people with an ideal and
they will transform the world. Whether this is for good or for evil de-
pends not upon the name of the ideal but the true source of its inspira-
tion.
The experience of such impressions of a level of creative reality that
can form and transform worlds belongs to the human soul’s develop-
ment. The soul organization depends upon the receipt of such impres-
sions in order that it may later serve as the bearer of a soul awake and
receptive to the reality to which these impressions bear witness. Left to
its own natural limitations, the sentient organization remains oriented
towards experiences of subjective aspects of the human being. Through
enabling it to become sensitive to the nature and power of ideals, the
developing soul-sentient nature is able to turn towards the surround-
ing world in a way that does not just seek subjective experience there.
Experiences of genuine ideals at this time of life provide the foundation
for the adult to be capable of seeking an individual meaning, purpose
and orientation in life.
If dogmas are brought instead of living ideals, the adult will either
cling to these stones in the soul organization or else reject their presence
without actually being able to easily remove them. If, on the other hand,
genuinely, creatively inspiring ideals are simply completely lacking, the
human need for meaning, orientation and purpose in life remains open
to manipulation. For this reason, materialistic times and cultures tend

187
to give rise to fanaticism, chauvinism (of nationalistic or other coloring)
or ideology.97 Only if ideals are brought as experiences reflecting the
living, creative power of the world from which they are drawn can the
natural processes of human development allow the world of the child
to grow free of the images into the reality of which they are but a reflec-
tion.
It is thus a pedagogical task of this phase of life to bring such living,
creative ideals alive for and in the pupils as lights that may lead them
onwards. Ideals must be shown to be capable of permeating all of knowl-
edge and action; they should inspire all of the themes and tasks brought
in these years.
The essentials of pedagogical methodology in this phase of life can
be expressed through these two tasks: for the adult (i.e. self-aware, not
merely sentient) consciousness to show how to transform personal ex-
perience into objective understanding and capacities, and to bring ide-
als as winged messengers of a living, spiritual reality capable of giving
impulses to and direction for life and of transforming the environment
in which we live on all levels.

SOUL AND WORLD

Beginning in adolescence, the inner life must be deepened and cul-
tivated, the outer explored and understood, and the connection between
the two worlds maintained and strengthened. A one-sided emphasis on
the inner world is unhealthy; if the fluid, unstable, somewhat arbitrary
world of the soul is looked to in order to provide definition, structure
and a foundation for the outer life, then a situation of outer chaos,
unreliability and dependence is likely to arise. This dependence can lead
towards one form or another of addiction. The inner world can produc-
tively serve as a source of creative inspiration for the human being’s
relationship to and transformation of the outer environment and as a
source of insight into and understanding of the buzzing, blooming life
of the outer world, but the inner world cannot rule the latter.

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 If the outer world, on the other hand, is looked to as a source of
content for the world of inner experience and an answer to the human
need for a meaning to his or her existence, then a kind of perpetual
dissatisfaction may fill the soul as a result. This can take the form of
anger, resentment or harping criticism, for example. This condition can
ultimately lead towards despair or even suicide. The beings of the outer
world, stone, plant and animal – even more so those of the technologi-
cal world – are devoid of all capacity to speak any other language than
that which comes to expression in their outer existence; they are, in a
sense, dumb for us, for they cannot speak the language of the soul.
The form of our life and experience is necessarily given by the outer
world, the content by the inner world. Though any one subject may
seem to draw more upon one of these worlds than the other, e.g. science
attending to the outer world, art drawing from the inner, it is the task of
the upper school teacher to ensure that a balance is brought about
through the whole approach to and style of the lessons.
The science teacher cultivates a sense of wonder and love for the
fullness of experience that nature generously and copiously offers. Out
of the sense of the richness of inner feeling that arises in us when we
meet nature’s outer richness, the pupil’s attention can be directed to
discovering, through the schooling of their attentive and perceptive fac-
ulties, the systematic principles that underlie the natural world. This
should always be accompanied by a sense of awe, surprise and grace
that such principles are ever again to be found. The children must come
to experience that it is not the inner world that gives this order, that it is
not a matter of learning abstract theories which are then imposed upon
nature or over her rich flux, but that when the human soul offers its
careful, attentive awareness to a nature itself devoid of the capacity to
become aware of its own being, nature’s own innate but hidden, wise
organization can be gradually and ever more precisely perceived and
articulated.

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 The art teacher brings a special kind of wisdom to bear in order that
the artistic work may flourish as it should. The pupils experience a kind
of rigor in the approach whereby they gain a systematic foundation in
all aspects of the work: materials, preparation of materials (learning, for
example, to make a simple brush and pigments), techniques appropri-
ate to various media, then light, color, form and composition. These ex-
amples are drawn from painting, but similar principles apply to the
other arts, and all this must be experienced by the pupils as the requi-
site framework for becoming freely expressive in the various media.
However, the outer world – the world of materials, media, technique,
and so forth – can never supply the inner content of the artistic work.
Only the inner life of soul can give this content.
The pupils must come to experience how the inner and outer worlds
meet in one way in the arts, another way in the sciences. This requires of
the teacher that, whatever subject he or she is bringing, both elements,
the world of inner experience and that of outer perception, are given
attention. The scientific lessons have to be very artistically composed.
The choice of elements or experiments, the order in which these are
presented, the whole arrangement must show a certain artistic touch, a
love for the subject, not as specialization, but as an approach to explor-
ing the world. The artistic lessons, on the other hand, require a system-
atic composition of the course of exercises and a clarity of intent behind
each individual exercise, leading to the pupils’ increasing capacity to
achieve expression and freedom from subjective tendencies derived from
habits, conditioning, constitution, and so forth.
Through a rigorous schooling towards freedom, this is the path of
the arts, whereas science achieves a rigorous, systematic organization
beginning with what is an essentially arbitrary relation to raw sense
experience. Science brings nature’s wise order into man’s initially cha-
otic life of soul; art allows the human being to bring something essential
of his or her humanity into a natural world otherwise devoid of this
quality. The task of art is to humanize the world, that of science to bring
the objective cosmic order towards the human being.

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 Science turns its attention towards the earth. Art draws upon the
inner life of the soul for its content. Crafts, however, draw their forms
out of the spiritual world itself. These forms – whether of a spoon, bowl,
vase, clothing or a house – all have their ultimate source in the world of
archetypes, in the spiritual world. This awareness needs to be guarded
and cherished in the craftwork and nourished through the quality of
the work achieved here.
Through science, we comprehend the world; through art, we ex-
press ourselves in it; through crafts, we become co-creators with the
gods, drawing upon the same creative forces as they do: weaving,
molding, dissolving, forming, and so on. The importance of the craftwork
in the curriculum cannot be overemphasized; through it, the children
come nearest to spiritual reality itself.

SPECIALIZATION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL

Two streams run through all pedagogy: a harmonizing and unify-
ing stream that establishes a common basis of the essentials of educa-
tion for all children and a differentiating, particularizing stream that
meets the needs of the individual child, be it in a support and therapeu-
tic sense, balancing an insufficiency in development in certain areas, or
through specialization.
From the very beginning of school life, these two elements inter-
weave in pedagogical practice. Incidental assistance from a teacher, par-
ent or another pupil, or a particular exercise given for practice gives a
therapeutic element on the one hand. Choices made wherever elements
of freedom enter the work in any way and all instruction that takes place
in smaller groups or individually (with musical instruments, for exam-
ple, where the choice of an instrument is already such a specialization),
on the other hand, bring differentiation into the common life of the class-
room.
It is possible to guide a great deal of what particularizes back into
the general, unifying stream of education: the various instruments can

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come together to play in the orchestra, literally and figuratively speak-
ing. Especially after the entry into secondary education, however, the
question of specialization looms larger as the shadow of the future deci-
sion as to career and life direction (the shadow of adulthood) falls across
the child’s development. Looking forward the future choice of direction
in life adulthood is a normal and necessary experience, of course, but
the shadow should not be confused with the presence itself. In many
modern educational systems, children are called upon to determine their
direction in life, or this is determined for them at sixteen, fourteen or
even twelve years of age in ways that will have lasting consequences
for the range of possibilities open to their future choice.
Interests and pleasure in particular subjects and disinterest in or dis-
comfort with other subjects are natural enough experiences in school
life, though in the early years much of this may be more accurately at-
tributed to the child’s relationship with a teaching style or personality
than to the subject itself. Capacities and weaknesses will also become
clearer over time. With an eye to the course of human development as a
whole, however, it must be kept in mind that the future direction can
only begin to reveal itself just at that time when the school years are
drawing to a close, and even then mostly in so veiled a way that only
much later, looking backward, does the relationship between the direc-
tions undertaken in the eighteenth to twentieth year of life and the ulti-
mate direction of the individual’s mature life become apparent.
What does this imply for specialization during the school years?
First of all, finding practically, artistically and intellectually engaging
and challenging aspects of every subject will be of great importance in
the high school in order to fully engage all of the pupils. There is a po-
tential gate to every subject for every pupil if this differentiation is kept
in mind. The orchestra of the temperaments that is the tool of every
teacher of the elementary grades becomes the orchestra of the soul char-
acters, of the thinkers, feelers and willers in the high school. There is a
great potential in the high school for special offerings above and be-
yond what is possible within the normal course of instruction.

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 The learning of a musical instrument as well as many other practi-
cal and artistic skills or academic deepening normally takes place in
programs which run parallel to the main stream of the education, e.g. in
before or after school programs. A considerable amount of the child’s
need for differentiation in education (whether it be support and therapy
or increased contact with a given area or subject) can be answered
through such programs, and certainly from the onset of the third seven-
year phase of life – the phase of differentiation – onward, and ever more
strongly as the effects of this differentiation become apparent, for many
children, the availability of such additional possibilities will be partially
or largely determinate as to whether the school experience is a satisfac-
tory one or not. (Of course, the needs of some children in this respect
are met through the informal or non-educational possibilities which their
lives include.)
For a school to be able to reasonably answer the needs of a broad
range of children through to, or at least close to, the end of the school
years, not only will there have to be a balance between practical, artis-
tic, social and academic possibilities, but possibilities of deepening the
experience in each of these realms must also exist. After all, the young
person’s inner life is beginning to become more differentiated and ac-
quires depth, as well; only if this is being met appropriately by the outer
world, in particular here by the school, is the development of the indi-
vidual being properly cultivated. At a certain point, however, it becomes
impossible for a school to offer such possibilities in all subjects simulta-
neously: in blacksmithing and biology, in music and mathematics.
The question can be asked: From what age can the child or young
person sensibly make a choice in this realm, not merely looking for where
most of their friends can be found, to escape a subject they find difficult
or tedious, or for a teacher with an appealing appearance or manner,
but out of an inner commitment to the subject which will enable them
to take on more responsibility for their work? Only when they are capa-
ble of taking such additional responsibility is it helpful to give a free-
dom which can be otherwise abused.

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 When this aspect of the question is taken into account, it becomes
clear that specialization within the school program begins to become
sensible at age sixteen to seventeen, when the inner capacity for taking
such responsibility normally awakens, and is perhaps most sensibly kept
as a decision to be made as a fruit of this year in the planning for the
following year. (In particular circumstances, earlier specialization may
be necessary due to the circumstances of the pupil or the school, of
course.)
Ideally, as broad a common program as possible should be main-
tained, certainly including elements of all the areas of education. Spe-
cialization should thus be seen as a quite generally necessary differen-
tiation and enrichment of the broad-based central offering of the school,
not as an alternative to it.

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 Conclusion
THE HIGHER SELF OF THE CHILD

At any point in the child’s development, certain levels of the child’s

being are already in incarnation, other levels are in the process of incar-
nating, while yet other levels are not yet ready to incarnate. Much of the
work of raising and educating children focuses on nurturing the child
as he or she stands before us in incarnation or on the transformative
process of helping the child through the current stage of development.
The emphasis thus tends to naturally lie on those aspects of the child’s
being which are already incarnated or are currently coming into incar-
nation.
Is it possible for the parent or educator to work with those elements
of the child’s being which are not yet in incarnation, and if so, in what
ways might this be fruitful? Such questions will perhaps be particularly
alive in those who cultivate their own relationship to a spiritually or
religiously experienced higher existence. They should have an answer
here.
The aspect of a human being which is not (yet) in incarnation, often
called the higher self, remains under the care of spiritual beings, includ-
ing the guardian angel, in the spiritual world. We are linked with this
world unconsciously through our own higher being, the unincarnated
aspects of our own self. This link can also be achieved consciously
through an expansion of incarnated consciousness to include the spir-
itual worlds. We are able to reach the higher self or angel of the child
through both of these portals; we can perceive in or be illumined by this
sphere of being to the extent which we are graced with help from the

195
spiritual world or achieve an inner development capable of experience
in this realm. In reality, the two experiences generally go hand in hand:
the more we strive to develop ourselves for the sake of others, the more
we are graced with help from the spiritual world.
Reaching up to the child’s higher self or angel as a source of help in
our task in the child’s incarnation can be and is most effective when
practiced on a daily basis. Some seek this help only at times of special
need, however. In either case, the whole task of raising or educating
children is transformed by cultivating the awareness of a link with the
child’s higher being and with the spiritual worlds.
The ‘single parent’ is a powerful image for our times, not because
every parent is single, but because every parent (or educator) today can
come to feel himself or herself to be ultimately alone in his or her task.
Forming a connection with the higher self of the child on the one hand,
and with the helping powers of the spiritual world on the other hand, is
the only way to overcome this experience of isolation, for the real isola-
tion we experience is isolation from our own higher self, from the spir-
itual world and from the spiritual aspects of those around us.
An absence of companionship may be experienced as a loneliness
of soul. The physical world links us with the incarnated aspects of our
fellow human beings. It is not here, however, that contact is chiefly lack-
ing, nor does contact here overcome the deeper source of the sense of
isolation. Overcoming our spiritual isolation, our isolation from the spir-
itual reality of the world, is the task of our times; it is especially the task
of those responsible for the children coming into this world. Only
through an awareness of both elements of their being, their incarnated
and their higher selves, can they be helped to become that which they
have the potential to become.
The importance of love has not been mentioned yet in the descrip-
tions of the incarnating child, nor that of wisdom or insight. For the
young child in the first phase of life, and to a considerable extent all
through childhood, love, insight and wisdom can only be effective for

196
and certainly are only appreciated by the child when they are creatively
active in forms of experience accessible to the child. For the child, love
which does not create a harmonious and healthy sensory environment
and rhythms of life, and wisdom or insight which do not flow into im-
aginative creativity, are barren and fruitless irrealities. Paths must be
found and forms built up for wisdom and love to reach and surround
the child. This is a path of incarnation for our own higher selves, to
bring the ideals which live in us into real existence on earth for the in-
carnating child.
Love and wisdom are like the warmth and light of the sun for the
child: the natural elements which the child expects to be surrounded by,
which are only noticed when they are absent and for which thanks are
rarely given. But when they weave through all of the child’s experi-
ences, when they are at the source of the child’s upbringing and educa-
tion, what is given to the child is transformed from stones into the bread
of life.
Our striving to help the child is fructified by an inner awareness of
the true source of the being – and thus of the incarnation – of the child in
the spiritual world. This awareness can be strengthened and deepened
as an effective force in our lives by cultivating it on a regular basis.
A moment at the start of the day dedicated to re-establishing an
inner connection to the higher source of the child’s or children’s being
and to our own higher selves enables us to enter the day striving to be
open to the inspiration of and to serve the good forces of the spiritual
world. A moment at the close of the day dedicated to reviewing the
course of the day and to lifting up our lives into the perspective of our
own higher selves and of the higher source of the child’s being enables
us to receive in the night that which we need from the good forces of the
spiritual world.98

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 For those who wish to cultivate the connection with the spiritual
worlds neither as materialist nor as dreamers, meditations such as the
following may be used.

At night:

May the spiritual worlds

View what I have accomplished
Out of my own powers
For the good path of world destiny
And perceive therein the will
To transform my being
Into a chalice for its will.

In the morning:

O spiritual worlds,
Send insight
And strength to fulfill deeds
For the good path of world destiny.
Inspire my intuition,
Invigorate my imagination
For work in the world in your service.

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 Appendices

NATURE STUDY AND NATURAL SCIENCE

There is probably no other area in modern education that receives
so much attention as natural science. For this reason, it seems worth-
while to clarify the approach to the study of nature that is appropriate
to the course of child development. The child experiences nature in vari-
ous ways and at various levels according to the developmental stage
reached. The pedagogical task is to develop the experience and con-
sciousness that are possible at each stage. It should be especially noted
that each successive stage builds upon the appropriate developmental
experiences of previous stages. It is harmful to simply transpose a mode
of experience appropriate to a later stage of development onto a child
who has not yet had the preliminary and necessary development.99
At the beginning and the end of childhood, the experience of
nature is least concerned with its outward form. This is so at the begin-
ning of these years because the archetypal qualities that manifest in na-
ture are still experienced. It is so at the end of these years because the
enquiring mind is already seeking the underlying principles that mani-
fest in nature. In the middle years, the child focuses on the appearance
itself, that is, the earthly or outer manifestation of nature’s being. Expe-
rience at the beginning of childhood is thus unconsciously spiritual, in
the middle of childhood descends to an earthly consciousness, and at
the end is capable of being raised to a consciously spiritual level.
Pedagogically, this leads to the following sequence. In the early years,
exposure to nature should be intuitive and contextual. In the first school

199
years (including the end of kindergarten), images of nature are given
that include the archetypal qualities inherent in the various natural be-
ings: the pure quartz, determined dandelion, shy lamb. In the next few
years, nature’s earthly appearance is explored as an image of its higher
nature.
With the beginning of the phase of development of conscious-
ness or sentience (from thirteen years of age and onwards), the child’s
awareness begins with the earthly aspects of nature and builds from
this up to a new and more conscious awareness of what lies behind
these aspects. This begins with comprehending the interconnections be-
tween natural beings, e.g. ecology. Such interconnections are not appar-
ent in sense perception, yet can be made apparent to an understanding
experience of nature.
In the middle of this phase, man’s responsibility for balancing
this ecology through understanding nature’s beings and their develop-
ment becomes central. In the latter years of this phase (approximately
corresponding to the later secondary school years), an analytic, scien-
tific understanding of the principles underlying nature’s phenomena
can be explored. This can lead to a deeper sense of the spiritual forces at
work in nature when the forces of wonder, empathy and responsibility
are awakened.

Summary of the stages of nature study or natural science

1st phase: Intuitive Experience:

Early Childhood life in and with the beings of nature

2nd phase: Image:

KG – Grade 2 the image of the spiritual archetypes of nature’s
beings
Grade 3 the image of mankind’s stewardship for nature’s
beings

200
 Grades 3–6 the image of nature’s beings in their earthly
expression

3rd phase: Consciousness:

Grade 7–9 consciousness for context and significance
(ecology)
Grade 10 consciousness of the responsible cultivation of
nature
Grade 11–13 consciousness of morphology and principles
(scientific understanding in the classical sense)

A special topic within the natural sciences, of particular importance

in our times, is that of ecology. In the traditional Steiner curriculum, this
is implicitly rather than explicitly dealt with. This gap should be rem-
edied here.

Ecological studies

Grade Curriculum

Grade 6 Mineralogy. Basis for further studies.

Grade 7 Geology. Study of mining and natural resources

connected with Geography, the Age of Exploration and
Colonization. Metals.

Grade 8 Weather, Climate and Plant Ecology. The natural flora of

an environment as related to geophysical and climactic
conditions. Wild and cultivated landscapes: pasture land,
cornfields, orchard and market gardens, including their
relative intensity of cultivation. The Industrial Revolu-
tion’s dependence upon plant sources of power (wood,
coal, oil). Composting.

201
Grade 9 Animal ecology. The interrelationship and interdepend-
ence of animal species with each other and with local
plant life and geophysical and climatic conditions. Ma
nure vs. mineral fertilizers; modern agriculture (pesti-
cides, herbicides) vs. the traditional role of birds and
higher insects to destroy pests and of soil-building to re-
duce weeds.

Grade 10 Human influence upon the landscape. Dwellings of man;

studies of folk buildings and their connection with the
surrounding landscape. The polarity of village and town.
Urban studies.

Grade 11 Systematic plant biology of lower plants. Metamorpho-

sis of parts. Vegetative propagation.

Grade 12 Flowering plants and animals: biology and botany.

Genetics in connection with plant and animal breeding:
maintenance of a strain or breed, development through
cross-fertilization, hybridization and genetic modifica-
tion. Issues for humanity.

Grade 13 The human being and destiny: the meaning of incarnat-

ing into a given physical, social and cultural environment.
The nature of our responsibility for the world: we shape
the incarnational environment for the next generation.

THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS

The exposition in the chapter “The Nature of the Human Being”
outlined the processes of the ego’s developing consciousness as it finds
its way to spiritual experience. It described a path by which spiritual

202
experience can be found in clear consciousness and without losing the
capacity to put these experiences in their proper relationship to the nor-
mal consciousness developed on the basis of the world of physicality,
life and sentience.
It may be helpful to describe the nature and origin of spiritual expe-
rience as an objective reality in its own right, independently of the path
by which consciousness finds its way to this experience. Such experi-
ence depends upon certain transformations of various levels of the hu-
man being having taken place; these belong to the objective nature of
the experiences and will also be included here.
A first spiritual realm is encountered when the ego has transformed
the sentient organization into an objective organ of consciousness. This
organ can begin to perceive the impulses of the spiritual world as con-
tents of consciousness or sentience analogous to the normal experiences
of the sentient organization: impulses of sympathy and antipathy, de-
sire or fear, but also thoughts, will impulses, and so forth. These are
understood when they are experienced as objective, that is, arising from
sources outside the experiencing human being. Normally, we have no
direct experience of such a sentient world outside of our own100 and are
therefore prone to bring these new experiences into too direct a connec-
tion with or to confuse them with our own inner life. Though they are
experienced as vividly as the experiences arising from our own sentient
organization, their origin is in the spiritual world. Initially, we know no
more than that these experiences are there; we cannot say how they
arose and from which source. This realm is sometimes called the Realm
of Imagination, for, on the one hand, the formative images which work
creatively in the world are active here; on the other, an inner imagina-
tive activity is necessary to bring the ego into sufficiently flexible, living
activity to penetrate into this first stage of spiritual experience.
In this realm, the ego is for the first time becoming active in relation
to spiritual reality. Previously, spiritual reality played into the soul life
unconsciously, if at all (just as impressions from the bodily organiza-

203
tions arose in the soul unconsciously during the earliest stage of the
latter’s development). As the ego generates new inner content through
its activity of consciousness in spirit, a spiritual individuality (i.e. a fac-
ulty of individualized spiritual creativity) begins to develop in connec-
tion with the incarnated being of man. This newly developing level of
man’s being has been given various names: Spiritual Individuality, Spirit
(or Spiritual) Self or Spiritual Consciousness.
To go further into the realms of spiritual reality is only possible
when the experiences of the life organization are transformed into an
objective organ for spiritual perception. The perceptions which arise
here are different than those which awaken through the transformation
of the sentient organ. The ordering and expressive reality or activity, the
form-giving and evolutionary expressions of the spiritual world, which
work in the spiritual realm similarly to how the life organization gives
form and life to physical reality, begin to be perceived. These expressive
forces relate to the sentient impressions of the first stage of spiritual
experience in that they underlie the latter. To a certain extent, only by
setting aside the veil of sentient images can one arrive at the spiritual
life-expressions. At this stage, these are experienced as spiritual expres-
sions without an awareness of their true origin (i.e. of what they are
expressions). In soul life, they are experienced as comparable to the life
principle in outer life: in impressions of growth, metamorphosis, disso-
lution, and so forth. This realm has been called the Realm of Inspira-
tion, for, just as life infuses or inspires the physical world, so these ex-
pressions infuse and inspire spiritual reality. The individuated nature
of the human being in this realm is variously named Spiritual Life, Life
Spirit, and so on.
To achieve the next and last stage of spiritual experience requires
that experience in the physical body become transformed into an objec-
tive organ of spiritual perception. This transformed organ has its own
mode of perception, analogous to that of the sensory world but not aris-
ing from the actual physical senses. An awareness of beings analogous to

204
a perception of entities in the outer world arises here. For modern hu-
manity, an objective character can only be attributed to such experiences
when such objectivity has been achieved in all three realms of outer
existence as well: the sentient, life and physical worlds. So long as sub-
jective elements play into the soul’s experience of and relation to the
more accustomed worlds of experience, no objective character can be
claimed for spiritual experience; not because such experiences may not
arise, but because the soul must first extend its capacity to differentiate
objective from subjective elements of its inner life in order to recognize
those aspects of its experiences which actually originate in the spiritual
world and separate these from subjective elements which have been
arbitrarily associated with or added to these experiences.
This realm is often called the Realm of Intuition, for conscious-
ness must rise to an identification with the spiritual beings themselves
in order to perceive in this realm. This is the realm where the human
spiritual faculty which can approach spiritual being directly is formed.
The individualized aspect of the human being in this realm is variously
named: Spiritual Being, Spirit Man, and so forth.
Every part of the human being’s natural constitution consists of
an organization differentiated from yet receptive to its environment: the
physical, life and sentient organizations. Every part of man’s spiritual
nature, in contrast, corresponds to a faculty differentiated from yet ac-
tive in its spiritual environment: the faculties of spiritual consciousness,
spiritual life and spiritual being (or imagination, inspiration and intui-
tion).101 The spiritual environments in which the various spiritual facul-
ties can begin to become active are themselves objective spiritual realms:
the realms of spiritual consciousness, spiritual life and spiritual being.102

AFTERWORD FOR THE WALDORF MOVEMENT

This work began as an attempt to bridge my perception of a gap
that I perceived between the state of understanding of the phases of
child development and the pedagogical practice in the Steiner/Waldorf

205
schools. It developed into a larger study aiming to be independent of
any particular school tradition, though still drawing richly upon the
sources of the Waldorf movement.
Pedagogical practice demands detailed concrete curricula and a prac-
tical methodology. The current understanding of child development
based on Steiner’s research consists primarily of convincing but quite
broadly drawn characterizations of the seven-year phases of child de-
velopment, and secondarily of much more fragmentary depictions of
narrower developmental stages within these broad phases. The detailed,
year-by-year analysis in this realm which would be required to provide
a basis for curriculum development – and which has been achieved in
such studies of child development as that of Piaget – has just begun to
be studied.
Our current understanding of child development from a perspec-
tive which unites the spiritual, soul and bodily aspects of the human
being is, however, inadequate to serve as a source of such a detailed
wealth of pedagogical and curriculum indications as Steiner himself
provided, or, therefore, as an adequate source of further pedagogical
and curriculum development for schools which seek to work out of such
a perspective. To make the seriousness of the situation clear: if we lacked
Steiner’s practical curriculum indications, we could hardly work out a
detailed curriculum for our schools on the basis of our current level of
understanding with the confidence that such a curriculum would be
adequate to the task of giving children a comprehensive education; fur-
ther, such a curriculum would be unlikely to achieve the depth and pre-
cision of the detailed curriculum indications which Steiner himself gave.
These observations seem important for several reasons. First of all,
it seems vital that those teaching out of such a curriculum comprehend
what they are trying to accomplish thereby. This depends upon under-
standing the curriculum’s relation to child development: What is to be
nourished or developed in the child through a given subject or method-
ology? How do the subjects taught in a given year relate to one another?

206
How does the path of development of the child correspond to the path
of development of the curriculum?
Steiner himself never completely explained from what source he
drew his detailed pedagogical indications. This is a pity. Unless docu-
mentation exists in the archives of his notebooks and workbooks, we
may never know the origin of the curriculum indications which he gave.
It remains, then, to try to build upon the basic understanding of child
development which he did give in order to make it precise enough to
serve as a source of pedagogical practice, and thereby both to deepen
our understanding of the sources and meaning of the curriculum as it
already exists and to serve as a source of renewal for this curriculum.
The attempt has been made here by working from both directions to
bridge the gap between existing, rather broadly drawn characteriza-
tions of the stages of child development and the extremely well-defined
curriculum and methodology of actual pedagogical practice. On the one
hand, existing pedagogical indications – largely but by no means exclu-
sively from Steiner – as well as existing school practice, in so far as both
of these were known to me, were rich sources of insight but were only
taken up here when their relevance was clear, i.e. when I could compre-
hend how they could be seen to grow out of the understanding of the
stages of development described in this work.103 In many cases, of
course, such indications and practices themselves gave further stimu-
lus to penetrate deeper or further in my understanding of child devel-
opment.
On the other hand, as the work progressed, the understanding of
child development which grew out of this study increasingly became a
source of a new relation to the pedagogical indications and practices
themselves, many of which were initially (at least to me) unclear or puz-
zling. I could cite in this respect many examples, e.g. the distinction
between the Kindergarten and the first grade fairy tale or the parallel
indications that minerals and mankind should be the subjects of the
natural history in the tenth grade. In general, let it be said that both the

207
interrelationships of the various subjects given for any given class and
the principles behind the sequential development of the individual sub-
jects from year to year have never been clarified.) This growing under-
standing began to bear fruit in new suggestions for pedagogical prac-
tice, many of which are found in this book. It is thus my hope that a
good part of what is found in the chapters on the curriculum will either
be brought into a new light or even be wholly new in content for its
readers.
The ultimate goal of this work is to inspire a deeper understanding
of the spiritual origin of the child and of child development and through
these to stimulate the realization of the principles of the latter for edu-
cation. In the case of those already active in Steiner/Waldorf schools, a
further goal is to free the teacher from the perhaps only unconscious
experience of a kind of slavery and inflexibility which can arise when a
curriculum – however effective – is not comprehended by those who fol-
low it. If even a few teachers can themselves be creative in this realm,
discovering new possibilities for the education of the child out of a new
understanding of the nature of the child which this work has helped to
fire, then this work will be achieving its deepest purpose.
There is no pretense to either comprehensiveness or infallibility in
this work. The suggestions made here in the corresponding sections are
not an attempt to articulate a model or ideal curriculum, but to show
how work with the principles of child development can flow into cur-
riculum development, deepening the understanding of how existing
elements connect with the needs of the developing child and stimulat-
ing the discovery of new possibilities for meeting these needs. There is
an archetypal curriculum which is inherent in the development of the
child. Every concrete implementation of an educational curriculum is a
translation of this archetypal image into a necessarily fixed and limited
form. In the end, every school and every teacher or educator must de-
velop an individual realization of the ‘archetypal curriculum’ inherent
in the child’s being, a practical realization of how to meet the develop-

208
ing child’s needs according to the needs and possibilities of the situa-
tion.104 The author hopes that this work provides a contribution to this
process.

209
 Endnotes
1
The stages and years of development can be regarded as being ap-
proximately synchronous.
2
The author finds himself in a position analogous to that of the tran-
scendental idealist philosopher F.W.J. Schelling. “The proof of this
system should be made not just in general, but through the actual
expansion of its principles to include all possible problems…”
(Foreward to his System of Transcendental Idealism, translation H.G.)
3
To quote again from F. W. J. Schelling’s preface to his System of Tran-
scendental Idealism. “It is the unique character of transcendental ide-
alism, however, that once it is accepted, it requires that all knowl-
edge arise as it were renewed from its very sources. What has long
been recognized as accepted truth must be examined anew, and even
if it passes this examination will of necessity come out of it at very
least appearing in a wholly new form and gestalt.” (Translation H.G.)
4
The fact that these schools are capable of serving children whose par-
ents come with no particular interest in the spiritual foundations of
the school, but are simply searching for a healthy school for their
children, is especially significant.
5
The unfortunate reality of the parents’ situation – geographical, finan-
cial or spiritual – preventing children who would benefit from
Waldorf Education from finding their way to it cannot be avoided.
Outer barriers can be overcome; inner barriers are often more chal-
lenging.
6
Whereby the body was considered to include both the living nature
and the physical-material form.
7
In a transition phase, the psyche or soul was considered to include
both a mutable and an eternal aspect, the latter being considered the
spiritual element within the soul. This eternal aspect gradually
dropped away from or was abandoned in descriptions of the soul.
In the sense of the exposition here, the eternal aspect of the soul
would now be called the ego, its mutable aspect the soul proper.

210
8
This turning point is given expression in the work of Aristotle, for
example.
9
By this time, spiritual phenomena already formed a category for them-
selves. Especially in the western world, spiritual reality was increas-
ingly denied or else regarded as something wholly separate from
and inaccessible to human consciousness (except perhaps in trance
or mediumistic states). Fichte and Hegel were perhaps the last phi-
losophers to experience the possibility of human consciousness ris-
ing to spiritual experience without recourse to ecstatic means. In the
last few decades, of course, an increased attention has been paid to
spiritual experience, and a philosophical revival of the question is
underway.
10
Such as gene technology wherein, as these lines are written, it is be-
ing shown that the human being has but few more genes than a
mouse. Thus, the genetic structure is barely adequate to explain the
far more complicated physical organism of the human being (for
example, the central nervous system) and can not plausibly be asso-
ciated with elements of life, consciousness or individuality.
11
Except in a pathological state such as a coma, where the individuality
and consciousness are unable to unite with the life and body.
12
The terms ‘organization’ and ‘body’ will be used somewhat inter-
changeably in the following exposition; every organization has a
comparatively stable content to which the term body can be applied;
every body a corresponding organization.
13
In my understanding, these correspond to Fichte’s subjective and
objective egos.
14
Though these are independent of the previously experienced content
of the outer world, they are arrived at through and tested by such
experiences. Thus, though they are abstract, they describe the condi-
tioning laws of the real and experienced world and are by no means
arbitrary.
15
A summary of this section may be helpful.
Because we experience the realms of physical reality, life and sen-
tience through our corresponding organizations, this experience is
dependent upon the individual bodily nature of these organizations
and is thus necessarily subjective. (Each of us has a physical, life
and sentient body which experiences the world differently from

211
 everyone else.) Subjective experiences are thus the initially avail-
able content of soul life. They are taken up into our inner life and,
before we begin to reflect upon the relationship of our experience to
that of others or to the world outside of ourselves, treated as real
(i.e. not distinguished as subjective). This is the naïve state of expe-
rience. In so far as subjective content is not distinguished in its sub-
jectivity here, however, the soul life itself takes on the subjective
character of its content.
With reflection comes insight into the initially subjective nature of
our experience and a gradual ability to determine objective soul con-
tent and distinguish this from content of a subjective nature. Through
increasingly self-reflective activity, man’s soul life is thus capable of
evolving from a subjective to an objective treatment of inner experi-
ence. The stages of relationship to experience described here are thus
a progressive attempt to escape the initially subjective nature of ex-
perience; in order to arrive at objective experience, however, succes-
sive stages of abstraction from the content of experience are required.
16
Lower members in the sense of their activity being below the level of
the ego’s wakeful consciousness.
17
In ancient languages, such as Hebrew, there are distinct words for
formative activity, i.e. reshaping already given material, and creative
activity, i.e. bringing forth essentially new substance in any realm of
existence. This distinction is only partially preserved in modern lan-
guages. ‘Creation’ is traditionally reserved to describe the activity
of God in bringing forth that which is essentially new. In this sense,
the ego here is creative, not merely formative; it brings forth wholly
new content as a result of its activity. In the realm of body and soul,
the ego only experiences formative activity, whereas in self-experi-
ence, it experiences creative activity for the first time.
18
This will be explained in greater detail below.
19
The world of space is twelve-fold in nature, thus twelve possible modes
of sensory perception. The world of formative development and time
is seven-fold in nature; thus there are seven developmental proc-
esses (and seven days of the week). The world of consciousness is
three-fold in nature, thus the soul’s articulation into thinking, feel-
ing and willing and the three stages of soul development. The world
of individuality is single in nature, thus the ego’s unity.

212
20
These images have been developed by the author in conjunction with
the artist Peter A. Wolf. It is only fair to say that, though both author
and artist are very familiar with Rudolf Steiner’s seven Goetheanum
capitals, and though some correspondences will be perceived with
these, the present series originated directly out of the author’s work
with developmental stages as described in the present book. Paral-
lels or correspondences between the two series are the result of their
common source in this archetypal developmental sequence.
21
An entity’s relationship to the environment can also be described as
its condition of consciousness, whereby consciousness must be re-
garded in the very broadest sense.
22
In child development, as well, a study of this individual variation in
the working of the various formative stages can be extremely pro-
ductive. This study must limit itself to the archetypal pattern of de-
velopment upon which a general pedagogy can be founded. The
realm of special education is a separate but not less important ques-
tion.
23
My will cannot directly shift the physical matter of a pencil; it can,
however, direct the physical matter of my hand – and thus move the
pencil indirectly. That the physical body – and the other bodies or
organizations – can be organized in such a way that our conscious-
ness and will can perceive and work through them is a great won-
der; how this is accomplished cannot be gone into further here. (Cf.
the works of J.G. Fichte, where this question is explored in great
detail.)
24
Those who may quibble with referring to the whole first twenty years
of life as childhood are referred to the opening sentence of Arnold
Gesell’s standard work, The First Five Years of the Child (New York,
1940): “In a biological sense, the span of human infancy extends from
the zero hour of birth to the middle twenties.” It remains only to
add here: and not only in a biological sense.
25
Old age is becoming a season of life in its own right (due to increasing
longevity). In some cases, the relationship to one’s own bodily or-
ganizations and the outer world remains that of an earlier season of
life. This is, however, more of a delayed entry into old age than a
separate season of its own. In other cases, the process of dissolution

213
 of the organizations is extended. In such cases, the task of preparing
the aged for the re-entry into the spiritual world takes on a greater
individual and societal significance, but this period still remains one
dedicated to this transition. The traditional tasks of this time of age,
which were to advise those still occupied with earthly responsibili-
ties from a point of view already more linked with the spiritual world,
are hardly taken up today.
26
Cf. The Nature of Human Development, above.
27
E.g., wife, mother, friend, an outside occupation, and so forth.
28
That is, the consciousness conditioned by existence in this realm.
29
Dimension, as a descriptive term derived from sensory experience, is
naturally inadequate to describe the nature of spiritual reality. What
is meant here is the extent of this first sheath’s inclusiveness, not a
physical expanse. All further descriptive terms applied to non-sen-
sory reality in this work are used in such a metaphorical sense.
30
In this way, human beings are mutually responsible for bearing the
objective aspects of destiny created by each other. Originally, had
human beings not begun to introduce subjective elements into des-
tiny, such a life built out of the objective needs of the world would
have been possible. Though individual consciousness would not
have existed, neither would have individual flaws; every human
being would have lived in perfect service to the will of the spiritual
world.
31
Before the Mystery of Golgotha the goal of spiritual progress was to
completely free oneself of individual karma. The individual could
then live completely out of and in the service of the objective path of
world destiny, and was in fact no longer bound to return to earthly
existence. The sun path of voluntarily taking on others’ karma inter-
fered with this goal and was a rarity only known and followed by
certain exceptional individuals.
32
It is thus challenging to maintain an equal degree of love for the part-
ner after the sheaths are no longer bringing this in such rich supply.
It is important that couples understand the reason for the quality of
their love changing with the birth of the child; it is the changed rela-
tionship to the love-bringing spiritual sheaths that lies behind this
experience.

214
33
It is important for the normal (ego-) development of the child that he
or she finds both parents’ egos when descending into earthly incar-
nation.
34
Though centered in the inner ear, the sense of balance is actually sen-
sitive to the orientation of the entire physical body, not just the head.
This can be established by first standing or sitting upright and sens-
ing one’s condition of balance and then raising an arm or a leg with-
out shifting the head position from the upright. The sense of bal-
ance does not remain static, but communicates the changed orienta-
tion of the whole body (despite the organ of balance in the ear re-
maining in an unchanged position).
35
The sense of movement is sensitive to the elongations and contrac-
tions that take place in the body (mainly through the action of the
muscles).
36
The sense of well being is sensitive to the chemical changes that re-
sult from our inner condition.
37
It might be questioned whether thought can be attributed to an ani-
mal such as a bird. An animal cannot think; nonetheless, thoughts are
unquestionably determinant in animal existence. The bird’s capac-
ity to be aware of when it is appropriate or necessary to build a nest,
to select (even from previously unfamiliar materials) suitable sup-
plies for nest-building and to shape and reshape these rough mate-
rials according to an inwardly experienced form principle shows
that the bird has a concept of function, form and material which she
can flexibly employ. The thought of the bird’s nest resides in the
bird’s instinctive nature, but is nonetheless a thought, not (for ex-
ample) simply a fixed pattern of behavior.
The same applies to the bee’s communicative faculty through move-
ment; the underlying concept is fixed but the behavior is not. The
underlying concept lies inherent in the bee’s instinctive nature. The
movement is always an expression of this one essential thought.
38
The difference between our explicit and implicit experiences in the
outer world is that the former refers to characteristics of the sub-
stance of the physical world, the latter to characteristics of its form.
39
The sense of balance actually reveals the relationship between our
physical body and the outer world, in particular to gravitational pull.

215
40
Eurythmy is an art of movement that draws much more on the higher
senses than traditional dance forms, which live primarily in experi-
ences of the lower senses.
41
For this reason, sense organs such as the eye can not be used at their
full capacity at birth. The sense organ proper is fully developed, but
the surrounding muscles that control the eye’s focus are not yet ca-
pable of fully performing their task.
42
This does not imply that the mother must be physically present at all
moments.
43
Because the period of pregnancy lasts somewhat less than a year, there
is a certain sense in which the first stage of development continues
somewhat beyond the birth. Each successive stage could then be
regarded as beginning several months later than the dates used here.
For simplicity’s sake, the stages have been nevertheless taken here
to correspond with the round year.
44
This happens in stages; for example, the digestive system’s develop-
ment begins with the intestinal activity. At this stage, food passes
through the mouth and stomach essentially unmodified. Later, the
stomach begins to be active in digestion; this depends upon the or-
gans beginning their activity to supply the digestive fluids. Only at
the end of this development does the food begin to be chewed and
go through a preliminary stage of digestion in the mouth.
45
This accomplishment depends upon the contributions of both the sense
of balance and the experience of the rise and fall of pressure stimu-
lated by the breath in the inner column of fluid which extends from
the bottom of the trunk through the spinal column and up to the top
of the cranial cavity. The inner ear alone cannot distinguish between
a position of the body in which the head is upright but the rest of the
body is not and a position of the whole body being upright. The
support of the experience of the fluid column is thus necessary to
achieve a fully upright posture.
46
For the toddler, daily rhythms predominate, supplemented later by
weekly, monthly and yearly rhythms.
47
At a later stage of active imagination, these experiences will be freed
from the bodily expressions.
48
Unless the activity takes a sense-perceptible form, the child has noth-
ing to imitate. More precisely, the child will imitate only those aspects

216
 of an activity which are sense-perceptible. Intellectual and social life,
for example, are largely invisible to a child of this age except as they
make use of outer forms (e.g., the tea party).
49
Exceptions occur when the child has had experiences which have
dammed up his will or has, for some other reason, an abnormally
weak imitative capacity.
50
A younger child will, of course, be more or less comfortable, irritable,
and so forth, as a result of the condition of warmth or coldness she
finds herself in, but will not be aware of the cause of the state of
comfort or discomfort.
51
“Brought down” might be a more appropriate phrase.
52
Situations in which there is no human being responsible for a ma-
chine (e.g. in which it is left running unattended) or where the hu-
man being who should be responsible has become passive and led
by the machine instead of ‘running’ it (e.g. in certain factory envi-
ronments or, more common today, in which dependence upon me-
dia has developed) lead the child to unconsciously experience the
machine as if it were an independently willed being; this can in turn
lead to an unhealthy relationship or dependency upon technology
in later life.
53
Especially effective now is ‘celebrating’ the activity in ways that en-
hance its appeal to the developing imaginative faculty. Through
special songs, verses, artistic arrangements of beauty or verbal im-
ages, an activity may engage the child at a deeper level of her being
now.
54
Language here should be considered very broadly, i.e. to include all
forms of communication: verbal, pictorial, musical, etc.
55
Not every parent will have the lucky combination of time, energy and
talent to meet the needs of younger children not yet ready for a for-
mal environment. Various solutions exist – e.g. grandparents, ‘par-
ent and toddler’ groups and small care situations – but more must
be found.
56
Only much later, when the bones harden and cease growing, does the
experience of the skeleton become one of physical finality or death.
57
Rudolf Steiner puts the change of teeth at the end of the physical
body’s development, describing this whole period as a phase when

217
 the formative organization is bound to the physical body and trans-
forming the inherited conditions, and the pushing out of the second
dentition marks the conclusion of this transformation. The change
of teeth certainly begins at the transition between the physical and
life bodies’ development, but it clearly belongs to (and by any count
continues well into) the years of the latter, rarely taking place to a
significant extent and generally not even beginning within the pe-
riod of the first seven years.
58
Further growth continues to take place, of course, and further devel-
opmental changes occur in the physical body. After early childhood,
however, these tend to be in more concentrated bursts and associ-
ated with particular transformative moments (e.g. puberty).
59
For these reasons, during the period devoted to the physical body’s
primary development, it is important that the child’s formative forces
not be forced in any way which would draw these forces into the
conscious realm too early or too deeply, i.e. through exercises
(whether physical, practical or mental), sport or any other kind of
training. The formative forces must remain free to fulfill their proper
function for this stage of life, the development of the physical body.
60
Only in the final stage of childhood is the outer result imitated; see
the previous chapter.
61
The stimulus for children’s activity will be explored further in the
next chapter on “Metamorphic Imitation.”
The whole tendency to concentrate on educational materials rather
than educational processes is similarly flawed. Materials are tools
to be employed by, not the source of an effective pedagogy.
62
This is not to say that only that which is sense-perceptible has a place
here. That which is not so perceptible in and of itself can be repre-
sented in sense-perceptible form. This form should, however, be
adequate to the true nature of what is represented. An angel or a
gnome should be given a worthy garment. Similarly, to comprehend
the nature of electricity, the image of water flowing through pipes
can be employed. True images must be found, whatever the phe-
nomena or being.
63
This freedom is itself problematic in a different way; technology is
famously morally neutral and thus available to use for good or evil.

218
 The moral neutrality here originates from this lack of connection
with the inherently and specifically not morally neutral world of
formative forces.
64
Art may also express something of yet higher worlds: of the worlds
of consciousness, individuality, and so forth. Unless these are trans-
lated into a form expressive of the formative force (imaginative)
world, such expressions remain symbolic in nature. The symbolic
and the artistic are thus in dynamic tension; the one seeks to bring
in higher expressions, the other to put all expression in a form which
corresponds to its content in a living way.
65
Through such an illness, the novelist Proust’s organization of forma-
tive activity, and thus his experience of memory and image, became
extremely dependent on sense perception, for example.
66
It will clarify the nature of the formative organization’s experience
when rhythm is contrasted with repetitiveness or beat and meta-
morphosis is contrasted with alteration. Rhythm and metamorpho-
sis arise from the inner nature of the phenomena; beat and altera-
tion are imposed upon phenomena from without.
67
This shows the importance of the first year of this phase of life estab-
lishing a free interrelationship between experience in the physical
body and the formative organization. If this interrelationship is not
properly established, the levels of experience can be either confused
with one another or unable to be brought into mutual connection. In
the latter case, ideas will no longer be experienced as referring to
sense experience, but as a totally unconnected realm of their own.
Both of these problems can be perceived when early schooling has
suppressed the normal and healthy development of the child.
68
The author has deliberately chosen examples that illustrate the limits
of literal recall, abstract thinking and fixed images.
69
In later years, the university or workplace will bewail the lack of crea-
tive thinking and useful memory of individuals whose education
did not develop these. They can only be allowed to developed by
delaying the onset of the mechanical forms so cultivated in the
majority of today’s educational systems. A choice must be made here;
one cannot press for earlier training of the mechanical faculties and
simultaneously hope for a later flowering of the creative faculties.
In childhood, the order must be the other way around.

219
70
See “The First Phase of Life,” above.
71
Plot and character development in stories are not yet appropriate,
however.
72
There are cultures in which this is somewhat later (e.g. Finland) or
earlier (England and Japan). These are exceptions, and the educa-
tional experience with early entry into schooling, in particular, rather
substantiates the need to wait until the child is developmentally
ready.
73
I.e. addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, respectively.
74
The two girls in Mother Holle do not go on a journey of development;
at the end they are as they were at the beginning, their nature has
only been made visible. Hansel and Gretel, on the other hand, are
changed by their trials and come back to a father and home which
has also been changed as a result of the experiences of the fairy tale.
Therein lie the elements of evolution and development appropriate
to the first grade.
75
Outlines as depictions of objects are conceptual additions to the world;
they do not exist in the reality that we perceive. Allowing color ar-
eas to express the content is more true to both sense and soul reality,
which are full and rich in character.
76
The movement itself should breathe in a living way; the child’s breath
need not – and indeed should not – be directly addressed. Forma-
tive processes are being cultivated, not physical training!
77
A more abstract treatment of these elements belongs appropriately to
the third seven-year period of development.
78
The life and rhythmic organization of the animal has a formed, differ-
entiated, pre-determined structure dependent upon the predisposi-
tion and nature of the species. In contrast, each human being’s life
and rhythmic organization is formed in an individual manner (in
addition to the effects of being born into a particular language, cul-
ture and land).
79
This is the origin of the indications for story content in the chapter on
“Developmental Stages.”
80
The young child experiencing through the physical body has not yet
developed an organ to perceive the passage of time (thus the imme-
diacy of the current moment). Only with the independent develop-
ment of the life organization is such an organ available.

220
81
More will be said about the rhythmic aspects of these below.
82
Steiner speaks of this period as being one when ‘breathing’ in all its
many forms is the central experience of the child and the most im-
portant thing which education can ‘teach’.
83
I.e. children who have already entered the next phase of life.
84
Steiner uses the term ‘motif’.
85
It is especially characteristic of life in the modern world that this de-
velopment is accelerated and accentuated. Various aspects of soul
life are so dominant in our culture that they are constantly being
appealed to, e.g. demands on our evaluative faculties and stimula-
tion of the experiences of sympathy and antipathy (often intensified
to desire and fear). Children were once kept protected from these
elements, exposure to them being allowed to grow gradually with
the years. They so flood in on even the very youngest children from
virtually every direction of the modern environment that exception-
ally few escape accelerated development in this realm.
86
This applies to demands made upon the intellect or independent judg-
ment , for example.
87
This individualization occurs at the midpoint of this phase of devel-
opment, i.e. at approximately sixteen years of age.
88
See the appendix on gender differences for a comparison of the situa-
tion for boys and girls during these changes.
89
Solid – liquid – gas.
90
Synthetic materials were developed during a later historic period;
how much they should be introduced already at this stage is a deli-
cate question.
91
The young person’s own inner life and that of others; in dealing with
the awakening life of judgment at all of these stages, it is important
to bear in mind that the inwardly directed force of self-judgment is
as strong as the outwardly directed judgment of that which is expe-
rienced in the environment. In an individual case, one or the other
of these may seem to predominate, but it may be also that the one or
the other is more visible.
92
This can be extended into computer use as appropriate: word proces-
sors, the Internet, and so forth. These should, however, be devel-
oped out of the principles of automatic logic devices in such a way
that the nature, quality and limitations of these applications are un-

221
 derstood at the same time as the actual steps of their use are mas-
tered.
93
It is not completely satisfactory that an introduction to computer
programming and use (in the tenth grade) proceeds the understand-
ing of the technical workings of the computer, but this is preferable
over introducing the one too late or the other too early for the pu-
pils’ development. In any case, practical use of such devices and
even the logic of their programming are actually considerably sim-
pler to comprehend than the engineering principles involved in the
hardware.
94
This will be clear once leaf metamorphosis is studied in detail. It comes
to expression in the impossibility of envisaging the blossom of a
(not yet flowering) previously unknown plant by studying its growth
pattern. The blossom is always a surprise, somehow going beyond
the plant’s previously exposed character.
95
For example, the relationship of the various animal hand forms to the
human hand illustrates how the human hand presents an archetypal
form out of which various possibilities may develop one-sidedly.
The human being, however, remains malleable; the bodily-deter-
mined tendencies of the animal remain as soul-tendencies in the
human being; the bodily-determined growth forces of the plant re-
main as potential forces of thinking in the human being; the bodily
form of the mineral remains as potential will in the human being.
96
The division of the school years into school levels varies widely. Some-
times there is no provision for a transitional, middle school phase,
the child entering the secondary school somewhat earlier; sometimes
the middle school includes the ninth school year as well. The con-
siderations here relate to the actual steps of development and are
thus obviously independent of how the various school levels are
named.
97
The French and Russian Revolutions and the rise of fascism in Cen-
tral Europe in the 1930s – as well as many American phenomena –
can be traced to the materialistic culture that provides a medium in
which such tendencies grow out of hand. Lacking a healthy yeast
culture, a mass of dough will attract a wild ferment. Just so it is with
a society.

222
98
It is possible to confuse these two gestures. The materialist wishes to
receive from the spiritual world through gifts of outer life. For a
young child, outer gifts are bearers of an inner reality. With the awak-
ening of an independent inner life, outer gifts become at best purely
symbolic of, at worst entirely empty of inner reality. For the adult,
the gifts of the spiritual world are received in the inner life. Gifts of
the outer world are responsibilities that end up being truly gifts only
if given meaning through our own inner life.
The spiritual dreamer, on the other hand, wishes to serve the spir-
itual world exclusively through the inner life. In old age or senility,
the inner life becomes an objectively experienced world. This is part
of the preparation for life after death, when what we know during
earthly life as the world of inner experience will surround the soul
in another, objective form, as a spiritual reality that makes up the
outer life of the spiritual worlds. What we then experience as an
inner, subjective life is a transformation of what we know during
our earthly life as the outer world. Before this loss of wakeful earthly
consciousness, however, the path of service to the spiritual world is
trodden through our life in the outer world. Service to the inner life
is self-development which can only become true service if it is used to
build our capacity to serve others in the outer world as well.
99
This is one of the blatantly ignored principles of education, especially
in the natural sciences. The attempt to bring material appropriate at
the middle school, secondary or even college level at an earlier –
sometimes at the earliest possible! – moment of education signals
the complete misunderstanding of child development. Just as a plant
which is driven to create fruit or seeds at the earliest possible mo-
ment cannot possibly develop its whole being healthily or naturally,
but will be stunted in all other realms, so it is with the child. As we
spend ever more time with technology and less with nature, the re-
sulting tendency towards accelerated development in the human
(and natural) realm will inevitably be ever more in conflict with and
at the expense of the child’s (and nature’s) proper and healthy de-
velopment.
100
For this reason, they are easily confounded with projections of inner
experiences. The latter are the result of a soul life which has lost its

223
 objectivity; the experiences here can only be discovered by a soul
life fully capable of objectivity in normal existence, and which from
this extends itself into the spiritual world.
101
It is in the capacity of being active through the individual’s con-
sciousness that these are differentiated from the spiritual sheaths
which exist in these realms even for those who have not undergone
a spiritual development.
102
Rudolf Steiner uses the terms generally translated as ‘Spirit Self’,
‘Life Spirit’ and ‘Spirit man’.
103
A surprisingly large number of these indications and practices were
clearly related to the path of child development described here.
104
In many cases, of course, such practical realizations are already be-
ing developed. The questions of how the individual school’s cur-
riculum is being developed and why are often unresolved: it simply
happens out of the practical situation. This may be sufficient in the
short or even medium term. In the long term, and for the future of
education in general, curriculum development must have an ever
more conscious connection with the course of child development.

224
 At the Source
At the Source

Harlan Gilbert was born in Chicago. His teaching

experience has ranged over all ages: pre-school,
The Incarnation

Harlan Gilbert
kindergarten, elementary school and high school. of the Child and the
He has a Master’s Degree in Education and has
written and lectured on education and new Development of a
developments in science and philosophy. He has
lived and worked in the United States, England, Modern Pedagogy
Scotland, Switzerland, and Hungary. He returned
to the United States in 2002 and is presently
teaching high school mathematics at a Waldorf
school in New York State.
Harlan Gilbert

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