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The uniqueness of Educate Yourself for Tomorrow and its value to you center on being able to dialog with an experienced mentor about the questions raised. There are no true or false answers. The more you bring to the material, the more you will gain from it. Enroll in course...
HUM 401: FROM THE SEARCH FOR MEANING TO THE SOURCES OF MEANING: VIKTOR FRANKL AND RUDOLF STEINER
This course is based on reading two books which explore the meaning of life: Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). The life work of both authors leads us into the deepest recesses of the human soul in an attempt to answer questions about what it means to be human.
The question of meaning immediately raises the question of freedom. Can my life have any meaning if I am compelled to do the things I do? Many people accept life just the way it is. No questions. It could be argued that as a creature of nature, meaning lies in acting as naturally as possible. This leads to a completely deterministic view of life. In fact, Freud wrote, "The moment one inquires about the sense or value of life, one is sick" (quoted by Frankl in The Unheard Cry for Meaning). After all, even a cog in a machine plays a meaningful role in the working of the machine. Yes, but doesn't the meaning, in that case, belong to the machine? The cog is interchangeable, replaceable. There is no room for individual, personal meaning. As part in the machinery of nature we would simply be mechanical robots.
Similarly, it could be argued that the meaning of life refers to the mysterious and ultimately unknowable workings of a higher power. All is written in the stars. We live out the inexorable destiny the gods intended for us. Again, there would be no personal meaning. We would be marionettes dancing to strings pulled by the gods. If you feel satisfied with either of these views, it would be best if you do not take this course and went on with your life. These are perfectly understandable ways to look at the world. In fact, the majority of people fall into one camp or the other. There is an esoteric saying: "Dissatisfaction is the first step." Unless you have questions about the meaning of your particular life, the concepts elaborated by these two authors will remain empty abstractions for you. The words "question" and "quest" stem for the same root.
There are questions following this lesson that require email responses. This course requires no prior learning but does require the ability to think clearly and in an unprejudiced manner. [Guide by Paul Margulies]
(See also Bible Study, Love, Gospel of John, Ten Commandments, Baptism, Spiritual Science, Orthodox Religion.)
HUM 402: BUDDHISM AND SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
The entry of Buddhism into the stream of world history was a moment of profound change in the evolution of human consciousness. Not only did the religious tradition inspired by Siddartha Gautama (circa 560-480 BC) provide the world with a new understanding of the nature of human suffering, but in his realization of bodhi, or enlightenment, the historical Buddha made it possible for an earth-bound humanity to aspire to re-union with the spiritual world.
This course compares Buddhism with (Anthroposophy) Spiritual Science. From the standpoint of Anthroposophy, the events and processes of history contain meaning that materialistic readings of history inevitably overlook. Events generally understood as mere legends, myths, or anecdotes often conceal matters of great spiritual significance.
Students will study Rudolf Steiner's commentaries on the Gospel According to St. Luke which will bring an especially rich account of the relationship between Christ and Buddha. Steiner also shows us that the apparent discrepancies between the stories of Jesus' lineage and childhood found in Luke and the other synoptic gospels are not contradictions, but clues to a deeper, and radically new understanding of the incarnation of divinity in the person--or persons--of Jesus. The idea that there were two Jesus children in first- century Palestine would strike most Christians as shockingly heterodox, yet the awareness of these two boys and their respective soul-properties does much to explain the superficial differences in the gospels, and illuminates the role of Buddha and other exalted spirit beings in the formation of historical Christian consciousness. Although the fact is not acknowledged by either historians or religious scholars, the deeds of the Buddha and the Christ are directly related events in the evolution of human consciousness. Steiner's commentaries provide great insight into the nature of the relationship, and help contemporary students build vital bridges between history, religion and myth.
Lecture/guide by Eric Cunningham, Professor of History, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington
(See also Bible Study, Love, Gospel of John, Ten Commandments, Baptism, Spiritual Science, Orthodox Religion.)
HUM 403: HABITS OF MIND: PLATO'S REPUBLIC AND RUDOLF STEINER'S THEOSOPHY
Our American educational policy is primarily a theoretical exercise. The classics, the moderns, the contemporaries are dispensed in the classroom within an egalitarian wrapper of theory that levels all historical and cultural differences. To teach is to theorize, either in the heroic manner of the classics or in the indecisive manner of the contemporaries.
Antonio T. de Nicolas offers an alternative philosophy of education with an amazingly simple theory: Higher education in a free society must foster the habits of mind that enable individuals to perform free mental acts. Plato first identified these habits of the free mind in The Republic as the abstraction of images from external objects, the formation of opinion, and the diverse operations of both cognition and imagination. In other words, we must hold education responsible for training inner mental technologies, or skills, instead of transferring accumulations of facts, data, and information. Rudolf Steiner updates Plato's ideas in a way that shows the path to become a free individual.
Students are required to read Habits of Mind, edited by de Nicolas and Theosophy, by Rudolf Steiner. The outcome of this course will be for students to become aware of their habits of mind so that they can transform these habits and become free human beings. The success of this course will be in the way students are able to free themselves from the "paradigm rigidity" which threatens to splinter modern life into endless points of view. This material should help students meet the concrete problems that modern society puts before us in ever great number.
Lecture/guide by Antonio T. de Nicolas, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus SUNY
(See also Bible Study, Love, Gospel of John, Ten Commandments, Baptism, Spiritual Science, Orthodox Religion.)
HUM 404: THE ALCHEMY OF TRANSFORMATION
Alchemy is the ancient, primordial, sacred science of Nature. Present in all historical cultures from India and China in the East to the Abrahamic West and always adapting its practice to its context, its origins are lost in the depths of prehistory. In a sense, it is the primal cosmological revelation.
In the Alchemical tradition, the highest goal a human being can aspire to is the fertilization, gestation, and birth of a higher person within the soul of the lower human personality. This second birth is known esoterically as the birth of the Spirit Embryo. The first birth is into a body of flesh. Given to us by nature working through our parents, the body of flesh is governed by the laws of nature and returns to nature when we die. This is the natural way of things. Alchemists, however, know of another birth, one that is, as Jung said, a work against nature (opus contra naturam). In the second birth a Spirit embryo is fertilized and then brought to term by the conscious work of the student. This Spirit Embryo is called the "I Being" by Rudolf Steiner, the "True Self" by Carl Jung, and "the parent who would never lie to us" by the Kahunas of Hawaii. These names all relate to different functions of a being who resides in human consciousness as if asleep and is awakened only by conscious acts of will and rhythmical practices.
To understand Alchemy the student will read The Seer's Handbook, by Dennis Klocek, and practice exercises suggested in this book. This special training is necessary so that the student can build organs of cognition that can function both in the sense world and in the hidden world of the spirit.
Lecture/guide by Dennis Klocek
HUM 405: AN ALTERNATIVE WAY TO RECOVER PREHISTORY
Why don't thoughtful people take the universal flood stories more seriously? In addition to the story of Noah in the Bible, virtually every ancient civilization has a similar tale. The usual scientific explanation of humanity is that humankind began 750,000 B.C. (give or take a few thousand years) with few earth inhabitants, escalating in the past two hundred years to billions of people. People who claim to take the Bible seriously do not consider any pre-Noah civilization, and certainly not lasting millions of years.
Before the turn of the last century, W. Elliot-Scott wrote a short book, Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria. Included in this book are six maps of the world as it looked over great expanses of time before and after Atlantis and Lemuria were destroyed. Atlantis was located in the area that is now the Atlantic Ocean and Lemuria occupied what is now the Pacific Ocean. In 1904 the great Austrian educator-seer-philosopher Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures about the ability to see into this remote past. In great inner detail he presents the story of Atlantis, Lemuria, and the division of the sexes.
How many people lived in these remote times? Why is there not more evidence of this great population? Is it at all possible to recapture these times? How would we do this? What was humanity like before Eve when there was only one sex? If the Bible did not go into details about these civilizations, what is the purpose of us doing so, even if we could?
This course addresses these questions in short lessons that accompany Steiner's book, Cosmic Memory - the story of Atlanitis, Lemuria, and the division of the sexes.
HUM 406: LEADING WITH WISDOM: SPIRITUAL-BASED LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS
This course is primarily based on the book with the same title as the course: Leading with Wisdom: Spiritual-based Leadership in Business (2007). Supplementary material can be found at the website: www.globaldharma.org/sbl-knowledgebase.htm. This supplementary material consists of the full length versions of the abridged and edited interviews presented in the book.
All of us, at some time or other in our lives, face what one can refer to as personal-existential questions - inquiries dealing with our deepest identity: Who am I? Why am I here? What is a good life for me? What brings happiness? What is success? What are my obligations? In spite of their obvious significance, such questions tend to challenge us either early in our childhood or else in connection with a personal crisis; seldom are they part of our regular reflections.
Similar existential inquiry is clearly relevant at an organizational level: Who are we? Why are we here? What is a good life for us? What brings happiness to our organization? What is success for us? What are our responsibilities? This second set of questions is characterized by a similar characteristic; in spite of their obvious significance, they are seldom a matter of explicit concern for the leaders of our organizations.
The course deals indirectly with both sets of questions. Its primary focus is on the experiences of business leaders who lead their organizations and themselves from a spiritual basis. The course is not structured in an academic or teaching mode. Rather, it is designed to stimulate reflection about the type of personal and organizational inquiries referred to above via 'story telling' - by presenting the reflections of 31 top leaders in business from 15 countries on six continents. These leaders have all agreed to be interviewed as to how they combine their search for 'fulfillment' in the external world of business with their search for 'fulfillment' in the internal world, where consciousness and conscience, rather than the demands of the market and shareholders, reign supreme.
In other words, the course presents a framework for the student to reflect on how the individual experiences of these leaders from a wide variety of cultures, industries and belief systems relate to one's own experiences and context.
The course has no prerequisites other that a sincere desire to expand one's awareness as to some of the most fundamental aspects of human activity - personal and organizational leadership.
HUM 407: THE ETHER
In this deeply divided and hostility-ridden era, despite the Internet and all our global communications and travel, is there something vitally missing from our awareness?
What is it that provides the coherence, meaning, wholeness and unity behind the endless diversity we presently experience as this apparently random and fragmented world?
Awareness of the Ether is now re-awakening all over the world in a wide variety of ways—scientific, artistic, spiritual and in the arena of personal well-being and responsibility.
Here's a chance to gently attune your mind to this level of reality and reap the benefits of such an empowerment—without having to commit yourself to any kind of belief system or organization.
For this course, no specialist knowledge is required—scientific or otherwise—only a willingness to think and look afresh, be prepared to unlearn a few old habits and ask searching questions.
HUM 408: ESCHATOLOGY AND THE END OF THE MODERN WORLD
By Dr. Eric Cunningham, Department of History, Gonzaga University
What will happen in the future to our world? Since all history is narrative, the quality of the narrative will in large measure determine the quality of the historical life that any civilization experiences. Modernization seems, by any interpretation, inadequate to describe the vast scope and multi-layered richness of human experience. This course argues that our current mode of thinking needs to be replaced by some more inclusive, more descriptive, more plausibly fulfilling narrative. Dr. Cunningham's outlook will be fruitful for students seeking to gain greater understanding of how the various epochs of human history unfold and it will provide the core of that new and more satisfying narrative of history that a humanity that sees itself on the brink of disaster so clearly needs.
No prior learning is necessary, only an inquiring and open mind.
Required reading is Meaning in History by Karl Lowith; The Apocalypse of St. John by Rudolf Steiner; and The Far Future Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective by George F.R. Ellis, editor.