Towards Spiritual Encounter 

Everyday Sacramental Meetings  

By Albert Smit

With an introduction by Margarete van den Brink
Translated from Dutch by Philip Mees

Temple Lodge Publishing, 96 pp. £9.99

In his general practice as a doctor, Albert Smit observed numerous psychological issues in his patients – issues that often caused an existential crisis for the individual concerned. These experiences led Smit to change his career and to begin a path of research to discover how genuine inner healing could be achieved. In this succinct and inspiring study, the author offers a clear way forward that allows for individual and social transformation.

Smit points to a statement by Rudolf Steiner, that human relationships could become something of a social art. We can begin on this work today, through free and conscious choice. Engaging the forces of the heart, we can meet our fellow human beings as true individuals – as equals – and ultimately as brothers and sisters. Such work could help to heal the individual alienation and social divisions of our time. Eventually, human encounter could evolve into a spiritual event – even a sacramental act! Towards Spiritual Encounter is a valuable text for meditation and reflection.

‘The basis for all free religious feeling that will unfold in humanity in the future will be the acknowledgement – not merely in theory but in actual practice – that every human being is made in the likeness of the Godhead. … For then every meeting between one person and another will of itself be in the nature of a religious rite, a sacrament.' – Rudolf Steiner

Albert Smit (1940–2020) was an anthroposophical doctor, teacher and biographical counsellor. He began his working life as a tropical physician in Zambia and subsequently worked in The Netherlands as a general practitioner. In the second half of his life he changed his career to become a counsellor and teacher of the human condition at a number of professional training institutes (including in the United Kingdom). The reason for this change was his observation of the pain in the souls of human beings of the present. He wanted to make a positive contribution to this through the aid of anthroposophical insights and true human encounter.

Contents

Introduction

1. The spiritual has to be borne down from the spirit world by human beings.
2. The way toward heaven begins in yourself.
3. Be yourself the change you want to see in the world.
4. How do we bring spirituality into life today?
5. We are not at the end, but at the beginning of Christianity.
6. The creation is imperfect. Only when the creation of the Creator becomes itself creative is it perfect.
7. As the old world once came into being out of the World Word, from the Human Word that is cleansed and brought to life by Christ the new world will come into being.

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Review in New View Magazine, Summer 2024 by Richard Bunzl

This is a companionable and inviting little book, written in a warm-hearted and reassuring way. It comes in a small pocket sized format, with short, easy-to-read chapters. But it nevertheless contains great depth and compass in terms of expanding our experience of how we encounter our fellow human beings.

The book asks: What does it mean to have a spiritual (or in the terminology of this book, a priestly) encounter with another human being ? To begin with, it looks at three dimensions to this question. The first relates to how we actively meet an individual human being ‘in relation to the divine world in which our higher self lives.' The second concerns the way we connect with our fellow human beings in the light of the fact that we are all on a journey or pilgrimage of sorts through life. The third aspect which is growing ever more strongly in today's world, especially amongst young people, is our ‘relationship with nature around us of which we ourselves also form part.'

Albert Smit explores these different, often hidden, aspects to human encounter in different ways throughout the book. For example, there is an engaging chapter that weaves together the idea at the heart of Mahatma Gandh's oft-quoted saying, ‘Be yourself the change you want to see in the world' with the practical esotericism of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy.

As Smit writes: ‘Our own inner path is the source we draw from to let spirituel power stream into social life, for exemple by intimate conversation with a person we meet, by being witness of fellow traveller on their path, praying for them and blessing them'. The spiritual dimensions to these encounters are waiting to come to the fore. They just need to be awakened. By drawing on a quote from Steiner Smit continues: ‘The point is not that everything had to succeed right away, but that a beginning be made, a necessary beginning.' Then, in a dictum which really is pertinent to this book as a whole, earlier in the same chapter we find another iconic quote, this time from the German artist Joseph Beuys: ‘The new mysteries are taking place in the train station.'

Taking Gandhi's quote as something of a central motif, we return to the idea at its heart a little later in the book, but now on a deeper level. The anthroposophical view of the human being is that there exists a human spirit that lives within a spiritual world every bit as real (indeed more so !) than the physical world with which we consider ourselves familiar. Informed by this insight of the reality of the spirit: ‘This means that the concrete individual spiritual life of a human being is of decisive importance for the future of humanity and the earth. Our deeds create the possibility to express that which is present in us as quality, and to add it to earthly matter and the beings on earth: humans, animals, plants, trees, and their mutual connections. By acting out of that inner disposition we change that which exists in our surroundings. Usually this happens unconsciously. However, we can also do it consciously and ask ourselves: ‘What quality do I want to emanate from me and add to my environment ? The inner disposition determines the esoteric content of the act. Thus an individual cultus comes into being.'

This little book touches both the everyday and the profound. For example, it considers the importance of conscious eye contact as a basis for real contact with our fellow human beings. But it also dwells upon the future orientation of Christianity in the broadest sense, as the title to the fifth chapter, based on a quote by the poet Christian Morgenstern suggests: ‘We are not on the end but at the beginning of Christianity.' As Smit writes: ‘Because we are living in the era of freedom, change only takes place if human beings become conscious of this inner divine power and connect themselves with it. Out of this divine resurrection power they can then transform what exists in themselves, in society and in nature, and develop it.'

Smit then continues a little later by suggesting: ‘By inwardly connecting in this way with the new divine impulse, human beings gradually change from ‘taking' to ‘giving', a transformation that expresses itself in a soul disposition of wanting to be of service and making oneself available to others and their path of development'. The author gives a very real and modern-day example of this when he describes how people who themselves have experienced the inner turmoil of alcohol and drug abuse, are able, later in life, to apply their own insights to help others who find themselves in a similar situation. Thus, ‘This deed has the result that the former addict not only helps restore the connection with divine forces in other people, but also in himself. And thus the person grows both personally and spiritually. This is priestly encounter in the new sense.'

The final chapter considers the role of speech and the divine power of the word. Our casual, everyday use of spoken language conceals its divine origins, such that, ‘We have forgotten that the highest mysteries of creation are connected with speaking.' With the passing of time, this lack of awareness regarding the true power of speech and the word, has held back both us as individuals and humanity as a whole: ‘The decline of language is a handicap for people to come to know themselves, and therefore they turn into unconsciously reacting nature beings – unconscious of themselves and of others. Spiritual science wakes us up to embark on the way to find ‘the lost Word' again.' These words come near the beginning of the seventh and final chapter which bears, by way of a title, the following words by the theologian and contemporary of Steiner, Friedrich Rittelmeyer: ‘As the old world once came into being out of the World Word, from the Human Word that is cleansed and brought to life by Christ the new world will come into being.'

As will be evident from this last quotation, this book does implicitly raise certain questions as to how Christianity, notions of the Godhead, and our relationship with the being of Christ, can be presented and discussed in an universal way that reaches out to people of all faiths and none. One of the great challenges of our time, and for those working out of Steiner's spiritual impulse especially, is to find the language and concepts able to form a bridge such that the idea of the cosmic Christ, which lives at the heart of Steiner's view of cosmic and human evolution, can begin to touch the increasing number of peole of all faiths and none.

While this book is firmly rooted in Christian priestly practice (considered in a very broad way), it does strive for a universality that is very welcome, and of great importance for the way human beings continue to develop their encounters with one another long into the future.

Richard Bunzl