"A Threefold Exercise for the Attainment of Social Faculties"

 

Part of a lecture given by Jörgen Smit (at a youth conference in Dornach) in which he discusses a “fundamental social exercise” given by Rudolf Steiner.

 

 

“…Rudolf Steiner has given a fundamental social exercise which needs constantly to be re-examined. It can be adapted and modified in all sorts of ways. The more one works with it, the more one becomes aware of its depth and its manifold possibilities. It is as follows:

 

Interest yourself in the other person. Make for yourself a picture of him – not only one picture but three pictures, which should be quite different from one another. We shall try gradually to build up an idea of these three pictures. The first: One tries to gather together everything that one can perceive and know of another person: how he behaves, how he looks, his face, his whole body, his hand movements, his temperament, his knowledge, abilities and so on. It should be as many-sided a picture as possible. One so to speak inwardly paints a portrait of the person. But then one says to oneself – that is not the person, it is a picture of him. What is the difference? If there is an excellent portrait of a person hanging on the wall, at best it is an outstanding expression of this human being; but of course it is not this human being himself, for she only shines through, she is manifested in it pictorially. Now one views everything that one has thus assembled in this picture, but one does not say: ‘This is he’ – if I said this I would be making him into a thing- but rather: ‘This is a picture of his being. I have painted a picture of it’. The first picture is therefore many faceted but complete and finished. I am, as it were, looking through the picture of his real being, the picture is an expression of this being.

 

The second picture is continually arising, it is not finished, it arises in the moment. How the other person was yesterday what he did, what was wrong with him, what he said (whether it be excellent or despicable), is of the past, is finished with. I can never know from this how he is thinking now, how he is feeling, and so on. The first picture hangs, as it were, framed on the wall while in the case of the second the painter is still at work, it is in process of arising. In working with these pictures, one observes something that has serious implications: namely, that at first – unless one has first discovered and overcome it – one has the tendency to remain stuck with the fist picture (After all, I know how he is. I know him. I know beforehand what he will answer if I say this or that.’) The other person is – especially if one has had conflicts with him – complete, finished. One may discover, for example, that someone has lied. The next day one meets him – ‘Aha, there goes the liar; That is the first picture. Only all to often it thrusts itself in one’s imagination before the second picture, so that I barely even speak with the other person but hold on to my idea of what he may possibly have been. I have formed my idea of him, I presuppose that it is accurate and I hold on to it. This idea is there even if the other person is actually standing before me. Then I am no longer aware of what he is thinking and feeling now but am living with my idea of him, how he – possibly – may have been.

 

In so far as I am aware I am doing this, I sense a kind of gravitational force which issues from the first picture. I must not seek to avoid this, for what has been should be held within my consciousness – but it is, so to speak, only one third of the whole. A further element comes from the second picture, which arises only in the moment, and the third element from the third picture, which has not as yet been painted at all and for which the empty canvas and the painting materials lie in readiness. It is connected with the future, which of course has not yet begun, but it already lives in the person who has been portrayed, it belongs to his being.

 

How can I attempt to paint this third picture if there is as yet nothing there? But that is precisely it: that one opens oneself towards what may come.

 

We all have a tendency to remain with the finished picture, also in the case of ourselves. If one is, for example, melancholic, one sees only one’s negative side, one holds onto it and cannot leave it in the past. Perhaps one has done something bad or committed a crime – one should not deceive oneself about it but should say to oneself; it is nothing final but only a provisional state of affairs. In this way we see the new in the moment and we are open for the future. What will come tomorrow, in a year, in the next earthly life? Perspectives of the future open up, not only in ourselves but also in others.

 

The others who are for me on the periphery are not being taken seriously even if I observe them very precisely – if I remain with the first picture. Then they appear as they have been. It is not reality. With the second picture I am on the path towards it. With the third picture, which is still to be painted something comes towards me out of the future in the other and in myself.

 

This social exercise can be modified in such a way that one takes only the physical body into consideration. One perceives the physical body of another person and forms a picture of it, that is, again three different pictures. The first: a finished picture above all of the proportions of, for example, the face (nose – eyes – ears) but also of the rest of the body. But that is only one aspect of the whole physical body of the other person. The second, unfinished, picture concerns the heart, the lungs. If we regard the heart as something finished, this is merely a physical organ that has been drawn out of its context. It has been separated from the functions of the heart and from the breathing process. What is distinctive about the rhythmic system is that it is not finished. It is forever pulsing onwards. If I do not succeed in coming to this second stage, where everything takes its course in the moment and is forever changing, if I only want to see the finished structure, it means that I am ‘head-orientated’. Where the limbs are concerned, all three forms of contemplation come into question: the first in that I, for example, pay attention to the proportions of the hands, the fingers (long or short, broad or thin), the second in that I try to grasp the life-functions in the arms and the legs; and the third – and most important – in trying to grasp what is going to be done: the deeds of the will which will be carried out by the limbs in the future.

 

This exercise can be expanded to include the whole of human existence, in that I first take everything into consideration which comes out of the past, in a physical, soul and spiritual sense. Out of this I form the first portrait. The second arises when I meet the person whose portrait is being painted, when I speak with him; the third when I live with the question: what will become of him? This third picture is just as important as the two others! It is of vital importance for teachers with respect to children. All too easily teachers remain with the first picture – they have got to know the boys and girls, they know how they are, what they need. But with such knowledge they cannot see what is happening in the moment, still less what the boy or girl will be when he or she grows up or how they will develop further in the next earthy life; they cannot perceive what is on the way – they are unable to see the person who is becoming. This is what matters: to try to grasp the whole.

 

Now comes the question of who the painter really is. The painter is not of course the picture itself, neither the first nor the second nor the third.  Nevertheless the painter is a factor of decisive importance. With this question we approach, step by step, the higher self, for it is the higher self that lives in the painter who fashions these three pictures. The question proceeds further: ‘Is it the higher self in me who paints the picture of the other, or is it the higher self of the other who paints the picture in me when I carry out his exercise? Both prove to be the case: if I but raise myself in my consciousness to this activity, it is the other being who becomes conscious. It is a question of one overlapping with another…”

 

 

From “A Threefold Exercise for the Attainment of Social Faculties,” in Personal and Social Transformation by Jörgen Smit. United Kingdom: Hawthorn Press, 1992, pp 62–65.

 

 

 

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