The Parenting Passageway

I have been thinking about the temperaments right along because I have been reading “Discussions With Teachers” in preparation for fall, and then a wonderful opportunity came to take a workshop about the temperaments last weekend (and yes, the baby came too ).  I am looking forward to talking to you all about what I learned, but first we have some groundwork to lay down.

The groundwork is necessary because in order to really understand the four temperaments from Steiner’s perspective, one must really understand the spiritual-science viewpoint of the four bodies.  The four-fold human being is a really complex topic, one that actually requires many years of study and it really cannot be summarized well in a simple blog post, but my goal is to whet your appetite and leave you with some resources at the bottom of this post for further exploration.

From Steiner’s viewpoint, the four-fold human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the “I” or ego.  The idea of soul, spirit and body was something that was from before Steiner’s time and typically found in the Church (actually!)  but he looked at these “bodies” of the whole human being a  bit differently than before.  If you read the first few chapters of “Theosophy”, he discusses the background of the four-fold human being and his idea that we relate as human beings to the Earth in three ways:  the objects we receive information about through our senses, the impressions they make on us and cause us to like or dislike (antipathy and sympathy) and then the knowledge we acquire.  Steiner repeatedly returns to this something that goes along with the four-fold human being.

He writes in “Theosophy”:  “Through the body, we are capable of linking ourselves for the moment to things outside us.  Through the soul, we preserve the impressions things make on us.  Through the spirit, what the things themselves contain is disclosed to us.  Only when we look at the human being from these three sides can we hope to understand our true nature, for these three sides show us that we are related to the rest of the world in a threefold way.”

Or, to put it this way, he writes:  “Thus as human beings we are citizens of three worlds.  In body, we both belong to and perceive the outer world,; in soul, we build up our own inner world; and in spirit, a third world that is higher than both of the others reveals itself to us.”  “As human beings we call the highest thing we can look up to “the Divine,” and we must imagine that our highest aim and calling have something to do with this divine element.”

THE PHYSICAL BODY – The physical body is our body here on Earth that we receive our physical body when we are born.  We receive our impressions of life through our senses in this body, and it is the first seven years when the physical body develops.   The minerals of the Earth also have a physical body – they have their own physical substance.    Like minerals, we build ourselves up out of natural substances.

However, the body is just space for other things to inhabit.  For that we need the etheric body. 

THE ETHERIC BODY  (the “life body”)- The etheric body is another way of saying the body that has our life forces (some people think of it as “chi” from acupuncture and some martial arts, if that makes it more familiar to you). 

The etheric body is fully developed at the time of the change of teeth.  These “life forces” are  rhythmical  (think of your heart beating, your blood flowing, your breathing) and this is why we put such an emphasis on rhythm in Waldorf, to develop this body. 

The etheric body also has a lot to do with memory,and  rhythm is an aid to this as well. This is also  why we see mothers who are pregnant or with children under three with memory loss.  The idea is that to some extent the mother’s  etheric body (life forces) are working to develop the physical body of her child as a mother is connected to her small child through the Madonna’s Cloak.   I have talked about ways mothers can build up their etheric bodies before on this blog, but a quick re-cap would have one consider artistic work (music, drawing, painting, handwork); rhythm; the use of aprons and layers and head coverings; warming foods. 

The etheric body works to build up the physical body.   This is why we try not to divert the etheric body away for memorizing and academic learning in the first seven years, because this can cause challenges and problems with the physical body in adulthood and also  in the development of the 12 senses that come in through the physical body.  As Waldorf Educators, we wonder if this rise in sensory processing disorders has to do with children not being fully grounded in their bodies before they are asked to do tasks requiring sitting still for long periods that essentially require the head and the eyeballs.  This is also a case against things such as media in these Early Years.

Plants have an etheric body.  For more about this, one can see Schoorel’s “The Physiology of Childhood.”  Lynn Jericho also talks about this in her brilliant essay, “I Am A Human Being!” (link at the end).  Like plants, we grow and we reproduce.

THE ASTRAL BODY (the “soul body”)- The astral body houses one’s passions, desires, emotions.  The astral body works on the etheric body and is fully developed around the age of 14.  Waldorf Education works hard to develop a child’s emotive life, a sense of feeling and a sense of balance between emotional extremes to help develop this body.  This also makes perfect sense from a traditional perspective where a child is developing a strong sense of right and wrong, of feeling extremes in the ages between 7  to 14.

Steiner writes how we create an inner world, and then through our will we “work back upon the outside world, leaving the imprint of our own inner being on it.  In will activity, the soul flows outward, in a sense.” (“Theosophy”).

We share this with our animal kingdom friends.  Lynn Jericho talks about how animals have their own perceptions, reactions, they make choices, they take action, but animals are not the same as human beings.  In anthroposophic terms, the “I” or the EGO, only exists in human beings, and therefore we are really not part of the animal kingdom.  Steiner felt the animals recognized the presence of sensations, drives, instincts but that animals follow these up directly without interweaving them with independent thoughts that transcend immediate experience.”   The soul body is the basis for our spiritual existence, which is the “I” or spirit body.

THE “I” or THE EGO (the “spirit body”) – This is not Freud’s Ego, LOL.  This is the birth of the individuality of the human being, and is fully developed at the age of 21.  Only at this time can a person be seen in anthroposophy as “free.”  As mentioned before, human beings are the only one who have this “I” – animals, plants and minerals do not.  Lynn Jericho refers to this as “I Am.”   Steiner calls the “I”, a total experience of his or her being as body and soul.  Our “I” is our essential and individual human essence. “The “I” takes in the rays of light in each human being.  Just as we gather up experiences of body and soul in the “I”, we also allow thoughts of truth and goodness to flow into it.”

Steiner writes in “Theosophy” how the soul element in a human being is developed by thinking about our sensations, our actions and through this we (hopefully) create “a rational coherence in our lives.”  “And we know that we are only worthily fulfilling our tasks as human beings when we let ourselves be guided by the right thoughts, both in knowing and acting….Through this process, we make ourselves members of a higher order than the one we belong to through the body.  This is the spiritual order.  Soul is different from spirit, as different as it is from the body.”

This is so brief and doesn’t cover much of anything at all, it is like a thumbnail.  It becomes much more complicated, and leads to the seven-fold human being and such.  But perhaps this post at least gives one a place to start.

Here are some places to learn more for more understanding: (and just because you read things doesn’t mean you personally embrace it, it means you are looking at it all and seeing what you think!)

• The Kingdom of Childhood
• Theosophy
• You can also try Lynn Jericho’s free article on the four bodies here: http://lynnjericho.com/mywritings.html  Click on the one called, “I Am A Human Being!”

If you would like to read ahead about the temperaments, try this link:  

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/FourTemps/19090304p01.html

Temperaments are up next!!

Blessings,

Carrie