A Psychology of Body, Soul and Spirit.

William Bento worked in the field of human development for more than thirty years. He was a recognized pioneer and a published author in psychosophy (soul wisdom) and astrosophy (star wisdom), and travelled extensively as a speaker, teacher, and consultant. Dr. Bento was the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, California, and worked as a transpersonal clinical psychologist at the Center for Living Health in Gold River, California. He also guided social therapy seminars for Camphill Communities for more than twenty years. Dr. Bento became a founding member of the International Federation for Anthroposophic Psychotherapy Associations. You can read more about it here https://www.anthroposophicpsychology.org/Who-we-are

He died June 5, 2015. Here we publish fragments from his article he wrote in early 2015.

I will attempt to give an abbreviated view of the context out of which Rudolf Steiner brought forward his ideas in the Berlin lecture series of 1909, 1910 and 1911, now published and entitled, A Psychology of Body, Soul and Spirit. … If one lives with the idea that Steiner was taking every opportunity to address the origin, nature and destiny of humanity, many developmental aspects of his talks fall into place. 

He wished to reveal the origins of humanity from the standpoint of the cosmos, and the telling of the story compelled the listener to enter into picture building, imagining what cannot be seen by the sensible eye. In fact, it prompted one’s “I” to develop an organ of supersensible cognition. We can simply refer to it as imaginative cognition. Rather than to speak of abstract forces Steiner brought the living being-ness of the Cosmos.. Civilizations of our forefathers always told the stories of their relationship with the Cosmos, honored the many spiritual beings that participated in the human creation, and conducted rituals and ceremonies to invoke their continued participation in human evolution. 

In this particular series of lectures Steiner addresses the nature of the Human Being, who can be understood from the standpoint of the senses and from the phenomenological view of the soul. There is very little borrowing of ancient ideas about the soul nor is there much reference to modern concepts and formulations of the anatomy of the soul. Steiner attempts to bring a descriptive narrative of soul processes in which we are involved all the time. It is presented in a form that accentuates our own experiences and places them in a cohesive developmental context. And as such it bypasses the thorny dilemmas of theoretical and philosophical debates about the human soul. In today’s world there is a great deal of confusion, skepticism, and delusions about the nature of the human soul. The term “psyche” used by Freud had the meaning of soul. This term meant something much larger than the narrow meaning it has today. Soul meant a dimension that was both sacred and at the core of one’s character. Unfortunately, soul as used by Freud was translated into English as merely being mind. Although mind was in vogue in the Western world at the turn of the 20th century, it left out the greater dimension of the soul and its relationship with the cosmos. The whole birth of psychology suffers from a loss of a genuine understanding of soul. It has as a consequence been fraught with an intellectual convention of materialism. Fundamentally the soul has been abstracted from the spirit and driven deeper into the mechanisms of the body. In an approach to Anthroposophic Psychology realignment between body, soul, and spirit is sought for. This search is not for a new set of concepts to illuminate the realities of soul life, but to reinstate the heart of psychology. To state it succinctly, psychology offers us a path of knowing what lives as soul warmth and soul light when we take interest in each other’s lives. Psychology must not be relegated to an individual affair. It is a collective responsibility to create healthy conscious community that connects us to each other, to the endowment of the resources of the Earth, and to the wonders of the Cosmos.

Emphasis on the “I” as the spiritual executor of the soul is given a high premium in an anthroposophic paradigm. The “I” becomes the bearer of one’s destiny. It navigates through the karmic conditions set up by previous lives and contributes to the future course of humanity. But most important of all is its responsibility for imparting meaning to our individual development. In the realm of psychotherapy the “I” is the great transformer of our soul life. There the spirit must be found and be engaged with at the most profound level. Soul wisdom must be united with love for the spirit. When this attitude is fully embraced psychotherapy no longer becomes an intervention to alleviate pain and suffering, it becomes a means to bear and transform pain and suffering into wisdom and love. The path of Anthroposophic Psychotherapy and Counselling becomes a path of initiation, a path of self-education in the fullest sense of the word educare, to draw out one’s sense of destiny.

… Ancient wisdom practices always had the cosmos in mind when any attempt at restoring health or intervening in a healing process was undertaken. But today, in world that has ignored the cosmos and relegated it to mere superstition and myth, we must rediscover the reality of living within the cosmos. Not only as we can determine it as the vast celestial space that enfolds us but as the dynamic realm of living forces that permeates the interior space within us.

…

William Bento PhD, 2015