Rudolf Steiner: Beyond the Boundaries of Knowledge

From the beginning, spiritual reality was as certain to Rudolf Steiner as physical reality. He lived in both the invisible and visible worlds. He saw his task as connecting them. For a long time, however, the invisible world seemed more real.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian philosopher who founded Anthroposophy, a term derived from the Greek anthropos (human being) and sophia (wisdom), meaning “wisdom of the human being.” Alongside this term, he also used other expressions to describe his work, most notably, “spiritual science” and “occult science.”

These terms reflect his intention to present his work not as a closed system of beliefs, but as a method of investigating both the human being and the world. Steiner used the term “spiritual science” to describe his approach that aspires to be as rigorous as scientific thinking while going beyond the limits of sensory observation. Through what he called sense-free thinking, he aimed to attain supersensible knowledge, or insight into higher worlds, maintaining that thinking provides, in its essence, a portal to the spiritual world.

Spiritual science is not just one worldview among others that seeks to satisfy one’s thirst for knowledge, it also seeks to develop a relationship with one’s innermost being and the world, bringing inner calm and meaning to one’s life. Steiner states:

Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. He alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds in it what he himself in his own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst.

Rudolf Steiner, The Life, Nature, and Cultivation of Anthroposophy – GA 26. Lecture: “Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts” (17 Feb 1924, Weekly Member Articles)

Steiner was a prolific writer and lecturer. His Collected Works span roughly 400 volumes in the German edition. The majority consist of surviving records of his approximately 6000 lectures, many of which were later edited and published in book form. Topics are wide-ranging and include education, Christology, mysticism, human evolution, natural science, art, agriculture, social reform, among others.

Steiner developed the Waldorf school movement, opening the first school in Germany for the children of factory workers. From these modest beginnings grew what is now one of the largest independent school movements in the world. He introduced the expressive art of eurythmy, which he called “visible speech” or “visible singing”, and wrote four Mystery Dramas intended for stage performance: The Portal of Initiation, The Soul’s Probation, The Guardian of the Threshold, and the Soul’s Awakening. These contain the essential content of Anthroposophy.

Steiner launched the biodynamic farming movement, which predated modern organic agriculture, in response to farmers seeking guidance on declining soil quality and food conditions. He also developed anthroposophical medicine, in order to complement conventional medicine by considering human beings not only as physical entities, but also as beings of soul and spirit. He designed the Goetheanum, the main building of the Anthroposophical Society. And he worked for eight years on the 9.5-metre-high wooden sculpture known as the Representative of Humanity.

The beauty of Steiner is that he was not only a philosopher absorbed in the world of ideas and the natural sciences, nor simply an explorer of the spiritual world, but also someone who brought his ideas into practical life while remaining firmly grounded. His work was consistently motivated by a concern for human development and for the Earth, and above all by a desire to place the knowledge he had acquired in the service of the world.

Steiner had an extraordinary discipline, his will was like a cannonball that, once fired, shot directly towards its target, sweeping away everything in its path. His focus was like a concentrated laser beam, so precise that nothing could distract him from his duty. We would achieve much in our lives if we could incorporate these two qualities into our daily life.

Steiner was not only careful with his thoughts, but also his actions, speech and even movements. He sought to cultivate Gemüt, which he described as living “in the centre of the soul life”, and without which, he maintained, all Anthroposophy becomes largely futile. The term is difficult to translate, but it roughly means “a warmth of soul arising when thinking and feeling are in harmony.”

In the Gemüt lives the spark in which the world soul reveals itself in the human soul.

Rudolf Steiner, The Mystery of Death: The Nature and Significance of Central Europe
and the European National Spirits – GA 159. Lecture 6: “Moral Impulses and Their Results” (14 Mar 1915, Nüremberg)

Approaching Steiner’s Work

Steiner’s anthroposophic work should be approached in two ways: first, through the books and lectures he prepared for the general public, and second, through the great number of lecture courses originally intended for private circulation among the members of the Theosophical Society and, later, the Anthroposophical Society. These courses consist of more or less accurate notes taken at his lectures, which he did not have the time to correct, and consequently some passages may contain inaccuracies or errors.

He would have preferred the spoken word to remain the spoken word. But members wanted the lectures printed for private study, and so the lecture courses came into existence. Had there been sufficient time to revise them, the original restriction of “for members only” would have been unnecessary. In time, however, this restriction was removed altogether.

For this reason, if one wishes to gain an accurate understanding of Anthroposophy, one should begin with the public material, for it is the result of his Steiner’s own inner struggle to express Anthroposophy to the wider public. The private work, by contrast, arose from a joint struggle between Steiner and the members of the society, and was often shaped by their particular interests and questions.

Autobiography as Spiritual Development

Steiner wrote his Autobiography in weekly instalments for seventy weeks. The last chapter was published five days after his death. He had written to the very end and stopped, interrupted, as it were in mid-sentence, leaving his story “unfinished.” At the end of each instalment, Steiner added, “Continued in the next issue.” Interestingly, he omitted this statement at the end of the seventieth instalment.

Although he admitted that he was not very inclined to write about his own life, believing that one’s personality should be shown through one’s words and deeds rather than by looking at one’s personality, he nevertheless undertook the work at the urgent request of friends. He also wished to present an objective path of his spiritual life, and to correct numerous misconceptions about Anthroposophy.

In his Autobiography, Steiner aims to describe his spiritual development. He does not only focus on inner experience, but stays closely to his life’s outer pattern. For spiritual reality is expressed through ordinary lived experience and cannot be separated from it. He frequently dwells on passing friendships with affection and respect. Steiner had an incredibly sociable disposition and affability, and consequently made many friends. Yet, various times, at one stroke, a very valuable human relationship that he would have gladly retained was taken from him. This, he recognised, as a stroke of destiny or karma.

For Steiner, every encounter is a significant relationship, as we all live our life simultaneously alone as separate individualities and in a web of interrelationship with others. What we experience or achieve is certainly the fruit of our own effort, but that effort would not have succeeded without the countless contributions of others. Through others we may become aware of ourselves, and through us others may become aware of themselves.

Steiner felt that one could learn a great deal about a person’s struggles and goals in life by “perceiving a person’s spiritual background”, which is like the transition from a casual to a more intimate friendship.

The Early Life of Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 in Donji Kraljevec, which was then part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austrian Empire and is now in Croatia. He describes growing up in a wonderful landscape with mountains and forests, and at the same being exposed to the modern developments of his day through the railway, telegraphy and a spinning mill. These natural and technological influences would have a formative effect on his life.

Between the ages of 5 and 7, Rudolf had a paranormal encounter. A woman appeared to him and spoke words that may be rendered, “Try now—and later in life—to help me as much as you can.” She then went to the stove and disappeared into it. This event impressed him greatly, but he told no one for he would have been scolded for being superstitious. At the very hour when Rudolf had seen that apparition, his aunt had ended her life. He never met her, nor had heard of her. This marked the beginning of his lifelong interest in the dead.

About forty years later, Steiner would refer to this incident in a 1913 lecture, speaking of himself in the third person: “A boy who experiences such things in early childhood and tries to understand them according to his soul disposition, knows that, when such a thing is experienced consciously, he lives in the spiritual worlds.” From that event onwards, a new life began in his soul. He became conscious not only of the trees and mountains that speak to the human soul, but also of the spiritual worlds that lie behind them, inhabited by nature spirits.

In another lecture, he would later state:

The whole being of man can be infinitely strengthened when his consciousness is filled not only with the realisation of his firm stand here in the physical world but with the inner realisation that comes to him when he can say of the dead whom he has loved: The dead are with us, they are in our midst. This too is part of a true knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world… The dead are in our midst—this sentence is in itself an affirmation of the spiritual world; and only the spiritual world can awaken within us the consciousness that the dead are, in very truth, with us.

Rudolf Steiner, Death as a Transformation of Life – GA 182. Lecture: “The Dead Are With Us” (10 Feb 1918, Nüremberg)

An important event occurred when Rudolf discovered a geometry book in his assistant teacher’s room, which he was allowed to borrow, and which he plunged into with enthusiasm. He writes:

I derived a deep feeling of contentment from the fact that one could live with the soul in building forms that are seen wholly inwardly, independent of the outer senses. I found consolation for my mood caused by so many unanswered questions. The ability to grasp something purely through the spirit brought me an inner joy. I realise that I first knew happiness through geometry… I felt that knowledge of the spiritual world must in fact be carried within the soul just as geometry is. The spiritual world’s reality was as certain to me as the physical world’s reality… I had two mental images that, although still undefined, played an important role in my inner life even before my eighth year; I differentiated between things and beings that are visible and things that are invisible…I would have experienced the sensory world as a surrounding spiritual darkness if it had not received light from the other world.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part One: Seeds of Awakening. Wiener-Neustadt to Vienna, 1861-1890

Mathematics remained significant for Steiner as the foundation of his entire efforts for knowledge, as it offers a system of mental images and concepts built up independently of all sense-perceptions. Nevertheless, he felt that it is precisely these mental images of the supersensible world that constitute the essence of the sensible world.

Although his parents were not religious, one of Steiner’s most vivid childhood memories was serving as an altar boy at church, where he experienced the solemnity of liturgical music and observed the priest acting as a mediator between the sensible and supersensible worlds. This was not a mere form for him, but a profound inner experience. And this was even more so since it made him a stranger in his own home. He had striven to develop harmony between his thinking and religious instruction, a task he considered vitally important.

In his adolescence, Steiner began to tutor fellow students, which forced him to concern himself with practical psychology and the difficulties of human soul development. He once tutored a boy considered so abnormal in his physical and mental development that the family doubted he could be educated at all. Steiner felt that an education adapted to his individual condition would awaken his dormant capacities. He was convinced that the child had great intellectual capacities.

By gaining the child’s love and using carefully adjusted methods, including shorter lessons, the child improved significantly, and after a few years, he passed the entrance exams for classical studies. His health also improved. He entered a school of medicine and became a physician. Serving in that capacity, he was killed in the First World War.

Through his years of tutoring, Steiner became familiar with the needs of young people and basic methods of modern education. This proved useful when he would later develop the methods of education behind the Waldorf school movement. He realised that education must be an art based on true knowledge of the human being. The whole task of education is not about giving out information, but awakening hidden potential. The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.

One day, Steiner passed a bookstore. In the window was the Critique of Pure Reason by Kant, the great philosopher of the 18^th century. He did everything he could to buy that book as soon as possible. His unbounded interest in the book arose entirely from his personal soul life. However, he found no time to read it. Because of the long distance between home and school, he had to walk at least three hours every day and never got home until six. Then there was endless homework to do.

The young Steiner, however, found a solution. His history teacher seemed to be lecturing when he taught, but was in fact merely reading from a book. So, Steiner inserted sections of Kant’s text into his history book and studied them during class.

During holidays he continued reading Kant intensely, and read many pages more than twenty times before moving on. This, however, did not draw him away from practical life and the development of human skills. Intuitively, Steiner felt that he should be able to penetrate natural phenomena and know them in themselves. Kant had denied this possibility. The young Steiner had not the faintest idea that, as a mature philosopher, he would refute Kant, who had proclaimed that there are absolute limits to human knowledge.

At the age of 18, Steiner attends the Vienna Institute of Technology, registering for mathematics, natural history, and chemistry. He also continued avidly reading philosophy on his own, especially the German idealists Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

Steiner felt that his duty was to seek truth through philosophy. And his task was to study mathematics and natural science. He was convinced that he would find no relation to these sciences unless their results rested on a secure philosophical foundation. However, Steiner was deeply concerned that none of the philosophies he studied could extend to perception of the spiritual world.

Encounter with the Master

The invisible college of the Rosicrucians from *Speculum Sophicum Rhodo-Stauroticum* (1618) – Theophilus Schweighardt

In the esoteric tradition it is said that those who are inspired by a disinterested yearning for the higher truth find a master who initiates them at the appropriate moment. But the desire must be as ardent as a flame.

Through a remarkable combination of circumstances, Steiner met Felix Koguzki, a humble herb gatherer and healer who could “see deeply into the secrets of nature.” He had been initiated into the secrets of the effectiveness of all plants and their connection with the cosmos and with human nature. Felix spoke of dealing with nature spirits as if it were the most ordinary and natural thing, which only increased Steiner’s interest. He would later honour the “the herb gatherer” in his Mystery Dramas.

Felix later reveals himself to be the emissary of a higher initiatory personality, an actual “Master”, who instructs Steiner to penetrate Fichte’s philosophy and to master modern scientific thinking as a preparation for right entry into the spirit. Steiner referred to this enigmatic figure only sparingly as “Master” or simply “M.”

Through his study of Fichte’s Science of Knowledge, Steiner saw that the activity of the human I is the only possibly starting point for true knowledge. Previously, he had agonised over finding concepts that apply to natural phenomena, from which one could then derive a concept for the I. Now his goal was just the opposite; beginning with I-being, he wanted to delve into the creative process in nature.

The Master might have perhaps been one of those powerful people who remain unknown to the world, living behind an ordinary profession while carrying out a secret mission known only to a few initiates. Such people appear to have no visible effect on human events. Yet, their anonymity is what makes them effective. In this way, they awaken, prepare, and guide those who act in the open.

The Master did not have to do much for the initiation of his disciple, only to show Steiner how to make use of his own nature to provide him with everything he needed. He told him something along the lines of: “If you want to fight the enemy, you must first understand him. You can only conquer the dragon by putting on its skin. Your strength and your allies will appear in times of greatest difficulty. I have shown you who you are; now go – and be yourself!”

Steiner’s mission was “to combine science with religion, to bring God into science and nature into religion, and thereby to fertilise art and life anew.”

Goethean Science and the Archetypal Plant

Goethe and Metamorphosis of Plants – Andre Masson

In his childhood, Steiner was introduced to Goethe, widely considered the most influential writer in the German language, who also made significant contributions to natural science, though these were largely rejected by mainstream science. Now, after having completed his college studies, Steiner was asked to edit Goethe’s scientific works, and went on to publish several volumes on them. His own experiments drove him increasingly towards Goethe’s views and away from the usual view of physicists. He writes:

I thought that light is not perceived by the senses at all; we see the “colours” through the light; light reveals itself everywhere as perceptions of colour, but it is not physically perceived itself. “White” light is not light, but a colour. Thus, for me light was in fact an extrasensory reality within the sensory world.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part One: Seeds of Awakening. Wiener-Neustadt to Vienna, 1861-1890

Steiner studied the natural sciences from every possible direction, especially the forms of the human, animal, and plant organisms. He was concerned, like Goethe, to begin with directly observable phenomena, not with a thought construct. Through the study of the patterns and relations between the phenomena, one finds the building blocks of physical existence, which come from the spiritual world.

Steiner wanted to demonstrate that in his theory of metamorphosis, Goethe takes the position that we must think of the activity in organic nature as corresponding to the spirit. He saw that a Goethean observation of nature is a science of nature that leads to a science of spirit.

Steiner found relief from his sense of spiritual isolation when he read a conversation between Goethe and Schiller. Goethe presented his Urpflanze (archetypal plant), the objective essence or unified form underlying all plant structures. Schiller, influenced by Kant, saw this only as an idea formed by the human reason from observing parts, whereas Goethe argued that the whole could be directly perceived, both in the world of ideas and in the world of experience, with no strict division between the two—only a transition from one to the other. When Schiller insisted it was merely an idea and not an experience, Goethe replied, “Then I may rejoice that I have ideas without knowing it, and can even see them with my own eyes.”

Steiner felt that he had come to understand these words of Goethe; to him they meant inner peace after a long struggle. He had found a kindred spirit.

Thinking as Communion with Reality

Whoever acknowledges to thinking its ability to perceive beyond the grasp of the senses must necessarily acknowledge that it also has objects that lie beyond merely sense-perceptible reality. The objects of thinking, however, are ideas. Inasmuch as thinking takes possession of the idea, thinking fuses with the primal ground of world existence; what is at work outside enters into the spirit of man: he becomes one with objective reality in its highest potency. Becoming aware of the idea within reality is the true communion of man.

Rudolf Steiner, Goethean Science – GA 1. Chapter VI: “Goethe’s Way of Knowledge.”

It was Goethe—then, as now, largely misunderstood—who gave Steiner a solid philosophical foundation for building bridges between the material and spiritual worlds. In 1890 Steiner starts his work in the Goethe-Schiller Archives, where he remains for seven years. It was a low-paying and tedious job, but he found the time to write his main philosophical works.

Steiner reflects on the thoughts and ideas that occupied him the first three decades, which form a self-contained chapter. He writes:

I constantly stressed that the human soul manifests as a true reality when engaged not in thinking drawn from the sensory world but in the free activity of thinking that goes beyond sensory perceptions. I presented such “sense-free” thinking as what the human soul utilises to stand within the spiritual being of the world… To me it made no sense to speak about limits of knowledge; to know was to rediscover the spiritual meaning experienced through the soul in the perceived world… My primary concern in bringing forth my own insights was to refute the theory that there are limits to knowledge… Thinking has the same relationship to ideas that the eye has to light and ear to sound. It is the organ for apprehending… it was really my intention to show that the being in the sensory world is spirit rather than to describe the spiritual world as it appears when sense-free thinking goes beyond the experience of itself to perceive spirit… nature is in fact spiritual… It was my intention to show that in thinking one does not form images “about” the world as though outside it, but that cognising is experience. In the act of knowing one is within the being of things.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Two: Fertile Ground. Weimar, 1890 – 1897

Midlife Crisis: Between Two Worlds

In his thirties, Steiner realised how little he had truly participated in the outer world up to that point. When he withdrew from social life, he became aware that the only world he had been familiar with was the spiritual world he witnessed inwardly. By contrast, he found it very difficult in childhood and youth to relate to the sensory world. He often needed repeated observation to recognise and remember natural objects. To him, the external world really appeared somewhat shadowy or like images. It moved past him like pictures, whereas the connection with the spiritual always had the character of concrete reality.

Steiner experienced a midlife crisis and started to feel increasingly isolated from others. He could enter into the feelings and thoughts of others, yet he felt that few could enter into his inner life. He felt that he had to cross a threshold when he wanted to interact with the outer world, feeling more like a visitor than a participant.

I lived in the spiritual world; not one of all those I knew followed me there. My social interactions involved visits to the world of others. Nevertheless I loved those excursions. This was the nature of my “loneliness” in Weimar, where I led an active social life.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Two: Fertile Ground. Weimar, 1890 – 1897

When Steiner spoke to others about his experiences of the spiritual world, no one wanted to hear about them. Even his close friends strongly rejected his spiritual life. One of them often told him that he had alienated himself from what is essentially human, that he rationalised his soul impulses. His friend had the impression that Steiner’s feeling life was transformed into pure thought life, and he experienced this as a kind of coldness from him. Steiner writes:

My friend considered me a “Rationalist.” I felt this to be the greatest misunderstanding of my spiritual path. Thinking that leads away from reality and gets lost in abstractions repelled me… My friend was aware that I followed thoughts beyond physical reality, but he was unaware that, at the very moment of doing so, I entered the spirit. When I spoke of spiritual facts, it seemed to him that I spoke of something unreal; to him my words were merely a web of abstract concepts. I suffered greatly because, as far as my friend was concerned, I spoke of something nonexistent by speaking of what I considered the most important matters. This was also true of many others.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Two: Fertile Ground. Weimar, 1890 – 1897

Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path

Hercules Fights the Lernian Hydra, 1731 – Bernard Picart

During the time of his midlife crisis, Steiner gave his book The Philosophy of Freedom its final form, the substance of which had lived within him for a long time. It was published in 1894, and later translated into English as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity or Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. This is his most important book and main philosophical work, which provides the foundation for everything that came later. He states, “Writing that book, I felt I was writing out thoughts handed to me by the spiritual world until my thirtieth year.”

For Steiner, to be truly free, we must be conscious of the motives of our actions, instead of letting instincts, urges, and passions unconsciously determine our actions and lives. In such cases, the true self is unable to reveal itself, and we live in illusion.

Free spirits act out of their impulses—that is, from intuitions chosen by thinking from the totality of their world of ideas.

Rudolf Steiner, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom

When an individual experiences thinking as a living spiritual reality within, moral impulses arise from the true self, and by acting upon them, one attains true freedom.

For Steiner, freedom is located in human thinking, and the highest stage of individual life is to think pure ideas without relying on sensory experiences. Through pure intuition, we directly grasp these ideas from the realm of thought itself. What one then finds is not a separate “other world” behind appearances, but the same world understood in its true, spiritual nature. This is the core of Steiner’s epistemology, which explains how knowledge of reality is possible.

The true reality of the sensory realm remains hidden from human consciousness only to the extent that the soul’s perception is limited to the senses. When the world of ideas is added to sensory perception, consciousness experiences the sensory world as objective reality.

The fundamental maxim of free men is to live in love towards our actions, and to let live in the understanding of the other person’s will.

After forming his foundational ideas in the first half of his life through engagement with natural science and philosophy, Steiner’s next task was to form ideas of the spiritual world itself.

Nietzsche in Steiner’s Vision

Encountering Nietzsche’s writings was an important event in Steiner’s life. He was both attracted and repelled by his views, however, he felt a certain kinship with his struggle. He saw Nietzsche as one who was destined to participate in the scientific age of the time and to be shattered by its impact. Nietzsche looked for spirit in that age but found nothing.

In the meaning of their thoughts, philosophers reveal the Zeitgeist, just as a thermometer reveals the temperature of a room. The subconscious life of the age becomes conscious in its philosophers.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Three: Must I Remain Unable to Speak? Berlin, 1897 – 1907

Steiner spends several weeks in the Nietzsche Archives and in 1895 published his book Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom. He intended to make it known that Nietzsche formed an important link in the spiritual development of Western thought which should not be ignored.

Steiner also visited Nietzsche, who by then was no longer of sound mind, and had a profound experience. He writes:

The mentally darkened Nietzsche was lying on a couch… His eyes, though dying, were still ensouled; they received the picture of the surroundings, but it no longer reached his mind… The inner shock I experienced led to what I can describe only as insight into the genius of Nietzsche, whose gaze did not see, though directed towards me. The very passivity of this gaze rested upon me for a long time… In my inner perception, I saw Nietzsche’s soul hovering above his head. It was infinitely beautiful in its spiritual light, freely surrendering to the spirit worlds it had longed for so much but had been unable to find before illness clouded his mind… Nietzsche’s soul was still there, but it held the body together only from outside—the body in which it had met such strong resistance in developing its spiritual powers. I had read the Nietzsche who wrote. Now, I saw the Nietzsche who carried ideas from far distant spirit realms, ideas that even here shined with beauty though they had lost their original radiance along the way. His soul had brought golden riches of great spirituality from former lives on Earth, but it was unable to let them shine fully in the present life.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Two: Fertile Ground. Weimar, 1890 – 1897

A Profound Transformation of the Soul

At about 35 years old, Steiner experienced a profound transformation in his soul. What had once been a strong orientation towards the spiritual world of ideas, with less attention to sensory detail, changed into a new attentiveness to the physical world. The sensory world began to appear rich and significant in itself and could show something that only it can reveal. He considered it an ideal to become familiar with the physical world purely through what it had to say, without carrying into it any preconceived interpretations, letting thinking be guided entirely by what the phenomena themselves present.

Steiner writes:

Consequently, at that time, the full contrast between the spiritual and physical worlds appeared to my soul. I did not feel, however, that this difference needed to be reconciled by philosophical argument—as a “monism,” for example. Instead I felt that one’s ability to stand fully in this contrast with the soul means that one understands life. The experience of such contrasts, when balanced out, dies and becomes lifeless. Where there is life, the disharmony of contrast is active. Life itself implies continuously overcoming and recreating opposites.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Two: Fertile Ground. Weimar, 1890 – 1897

Steiner realised that those who experience the spiritual world through direct perception are able to recognise the validity present in even widely differing perspectives; they always avoid becoming too inclined towards one or the other. The various intellectual perspectives tend to oppose one another; but spiritual perception sees them merely as standpoints, each of which provides a different view of the world.

It is like photographing a house from various sides. The images are different, but the house is the same. When one walks around the actual house, a complete impression is obtained. If one stands truly within the spiritual world, one accepts the validity of whatever is “correct” in each standpoint. The ability to appreciate even what one has to oppose points to a fundamental attitude required for spiritual development.

The evolution of consciousness and the evolution of the cosmos go hand in hand. Steiner writes:

I was deeply enthusiastic about what I later called “knowledge conforming to reality.” … knowledge does not belong only to the human being, but to the existence and arising of the world as a whole… As human beings, we are not the beings who create the essence of knowledge for ourselves; rather, our soul provides the stage on which the world itself begins in part to experience its own becoming and existence. Without knowledge the world would remain incomplete.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Two: Fertile Ground. Weimar, 1890 – 1897

Theosophical Society

Illustration for the Thomas Carlyle translation of Goethe’s The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily – David Newbatt

In 1900, Steiner delivered his first esoteric lecture on the meaning of Goethe’s fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, which he had been studying since the 1880s. He writes:

It seemed as if Goethe had grown beyond his own worldview when he created that poetic work, as though compelled by the inner power of a semiconscious soul life… I realised that, while writing the fairy tale, Goethe had looked across the boundary, as it were, into the spiritual world.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Two: Fertile Ground. Weimar, 1890 – 1897

For the first time, Steiner was able to share some of his inner experiences. The lecture was well received, and he was invited to present lectures regularly to the members of the Theosophical Society, founded by H.P. Blavatsky. He did not know much of the literature published by the theosophists and the little he knew had been mostly disagreeable to him. However, he felt that, at that time, they were the only audiences truly interested in spiritual knowledge. He accepted the invitation as long as they let him speak about the experiences he had gained through his own research in the spiritual investigation of science. He would later join the Theosophical Society and assume leadership of the German Section.

However, when the Theosophical Society established a special society called The Star of the East to propagate the idea that Christ had reappeared in life in India in the child Jiddu Krishnamurti, it was impossible for Steiner and his colleagues to accept this new direction. As a result, they split from it and the Anthroposophical Society was established as an independent body in 1913.

Steiner often warned that the great danger of spiritual growth is false sentimentality. It permeates a spiritual movement again and again. Those most likely to face it are seekers who feel drawn to spiritual life. At first, however, it is difficult for them to gain a firm relationship to spiritual knowledge. Unconsciously, they seek a kind of numbness in sentimentality. They wish for special or “esoteric” knowledge. This can lead to the formation of exclusive, sect-like groups. For this reason, Steiner stressed that truth should be the only guiding force of any spiritual community.

Mystery of Golgotha

Holy Week. Day 7 – Christ’s Descent into the Underworld – David Newbatt

Before the turn of the 20^th century, Steiner went through what he called a “soul test.” He felt that he had to understand Christianity more deeply, a religion he had known intimately in childhood but later set aside. He seemed to have become a free thinker or radical, a fellow traveller with Nietzsche or Max Stirner. Steiner believed that one does not arrive at knowledge by forcing one’s own viewpoint on everything, but rather by immersing oneself in “foreign currents of thought.” But these were only way stations. Important though they seemed, they were only “trials.” Yet as they occurred, Steiner had to live them to the full. But he passed through them.

Now he felt that further inner development could only proceed through Christianity.

This was a trying time for my soul as I looked at Christianity… I was able to make progress during that period of testing only by contemplating, through spiritual perception, the evolution of Christianity… a conscious knowledge of real Christianity began to dawn within me… It was decisive for my soul’s development that I stood spiritually before the Mystery of Golgotha in a deep and solemn celebration of knowledge.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Three: Must I Remain Unable to Speak? Berlin, 1897 – 1907

Steiner’s entire effort, in fact, can only be understood within the context of the crucifixion of Christ at Golgotha.

In 1900, Steiner gives a series of lectures titled from Buddha to Christ, where he tried to show the enormous advance indicated by the Mystery of Golgotha in relation to the Buddha event, and that human evolution culminates in our endeavour towards the Christ Event. He also begins a lecture series on mysticism of the Middle ages, from Meister Eckhart to Jakob Böhme. Later, he collected these lectures in the book Mystics after Modernism.

Steiner developed the ideas that would later become his book Christianity as Mystical Fact. His intention was not merely to present the mystical meaning of Christianity as a subjective or existential understanding, but rather the objective fact that the evolution of human consciousness and the cosmos was changed by Christ, even if there had never been anyone of Christian faith. Christianity appeared as something unique and independent from the ancient Mysteries out of which it arose.

For Steiner, the Earth is not just a physical body, but has its own etheric and astral bodies. Thus, at the moment of the Crucifixion, when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ, he believed that all spiritual relationships on Earth were transformed. It was as if the whole “aura” of the Earth was changed as Christ became united with it.

Lucifer-Gnosis and the Foundations of Anthroposophy

In 1903, Steiner and Marie von Sivers (who would later become his second wife) began the monthly magazine Lucifer. This name was not originally related to the spiritual power Steiner later described as Lucifer, the counterpart of Ahriman. At that time Anthroposophy had not yet developed to speak of such beings. The name simply meant “light-bearer.”

Shortly after its founding, Lucifer merged with another journal called Gnosis, to form Lucifer-Gnosis. In that monthly periodical Steiner was able to publish for the first time the material that became the foundation for anthroposophic activity. It was here that he first outlined the inner effort needed to attain supersensible knowledge through one’s own inner perception. He wrote monthly instalments of How To Know Higher Worlds, which was later published as a standalone book. This is his most well-known work.

All the exercises described in the book How To Know Higher Worlds are the spiritual correlate suited to the West, of that for which the Orient longs: to bring the rhythm of the process of breathing into the process of cognition. If our thinking had the same tempo as our breathing many secrets of the universe would be disclosed to us.

Rudolf Steiner, Truths of Individual Human Development and the Development of Humanity. – GA 176. Lecture II: The Karma of Materialism (7 Aug 1917, Berlin)

Steiner also wrote a series of articles called From the Akashic Record, the basis for an anthroposophic cosmology.

He writes:

An anthroposophic book… is meant to be received into inner experience. This leads to the gradual awakening of a certain understanding. This may be a very faint, inner experience. But it can—indeed, should—occur. And the strengthened depth gained through the exercises described in How to Know Higher Worlds is just that—a fortifying deepening. This is necessary for progress on the spiritual path; but a properly written anthroposophic book should awaken the spiritual life of the reader, and not merely be a collection of information. Reading it should be more than reading; it should be an experience accompanied by inner shocks, tensions, and resolutions. I realise how far the substance and inner power of my books are from invoking such an experience in the soul of the reader. But I also know that my inner struggle over every page was to attain as much as possible in this way. I do not adopt a style that allows subjective feelings to be detected in the sentences. In writing, I subdue what comes from warmth and deeper feelings to a dry, mathematical style. This style alone can be an awakener, for the readers themselves must awaken inner warmth and feeling. They cannot let those feelings simply flow into them from a description while their attentiveness remains passive.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Three: Must I Remain Unable to Speak? Berlin, 1897 – 1907

Imaginations, Inspirations, and Intuitions

Glass window designed by Rudolf Steiner for the First Goetheanum, now installed in the Second Goetheanum

Steiner started to experience what he called imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions. The period between 1901 and 1907 or 1908 was when he experienced, with all the powers of soul, the realities and beings that approached him from the supersensible world.

Many experiences arose in Steiner when he was writing his book Theosophy. Published in 1904, it presents the fundamental truths underlying the whole domain of spiritual science. At every step he endeavoured to retain a connection with scientific thinking. This assumes particular forms as a spiritual experience deepens and broadens. In Theosophy it seems as though the tone completely changes the moment he passes from describing the nature of the human being to presenting the “soul world” and “spiritland.” He writes:

True, the first look into this spiritland is still more bewildering than the first glimpse into the soul world because the archetypes in their true form are very unlike their sensory reflections. They are, however, just as unlike their shadows, the abstract thoughts. In the spiritual world all is in perpetual, mobile activity in the process of ceaseless creating. A state of rest, a remaining in one place such as we find in the physical world, does not exist here because the archetypes are creative beings. They are the master builders of all that comes into being in the physical and soul worlds.

Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy

Steiner warns that the reader who is only willing to admit the existence of the sensible world will look upon the book as merely an unreal production of imagination. However, it is only through this new vision of reality that one is able to stand securely and firmly in this life. Without this power of vision, one gropes like a blind man through their effects.

The human being reaches the supersensible world through inner effort. Before it can be known, there must be a longing to discover what lies deeper in existence than the senses can perceive. This longing prepares the way for supersensible knowledge. Just as a flower cannot bloom without roots, so supersensible knowledge cannot exist without this longing. The soul has this longing because it is formed and built for the supersensible world, just as the lungs are constructed for air. However, many reject most strongly what they most desperately need.

Steiner later published An Outline of Esoteric Science, a sequel to the book Theosophy, dealing with the evolution of humanity and the cosmos.

Spiritual Counterforces: Lucifer and Ahriman

The original model of Ahriman’s head on which all others are based, created in Apr 1915 by Rudolf Steiner

Central to Steiner’s work is his description of two spiritual counterforces within human evolution: Lucifer and Ahriman. The Luciferic Beings seek to tear human beings away from incarnation and escape from the world and the human experience. However, human beings need life on earth for their development.

The Luciferic tendency predominates among seekers who pursue spiritual development without proper discipline. Such individuals become so absorbed in their own inner experiences that they become detached from reality and prone to illusions. They mistake subjective experiences and personal concerns for objective spiritual knowledge. This leads to a subtle form of egoism that obscures a clear understanding of spiritual reality. Excessive self-love and pride are two of the characteristic features.

Whereas the Luciferic tendency is strongest in religion, the Ahrimanic impulse is strongest in science, which negates our very origin as spiritual beings altogether. When one enters a realm of spiritual beings who are intent on making certain trends of thinking singularly dominant, one-sided knowledge results in more than abstract errors. Errors of the human world become in that realm living, spiritual interactions with certain beings. Steiner writes:

The absolute reality of those [ahrimanic] beings is that the world must be a machine. Their realm is directly adjacent to that of the senses. Not for a moment did I succumb to influences of that realm in my own realm of ideas—not even unconsciously. I took great care to make sure that all my inquires were carefully and thoughtfully conscious. Even more conscious was my inner struggle with those demonic powers who tried to develop natural, scientific knowledge—not through perception of spirit, but in a mechanical and materialistic way of thinking.

Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life (1861-1907). Part Three: Must I Remain Unable to Speak? Berlin, 1897 – 1907

Without a third balancing force, human beings would be constantly torn between opposing extremes. This third force is Christ, our ultimate model, who holds these opposites in harmony. The goal is not to flee from the counterforces, but to become conscious of them, thereby avoiding one-sidedness.

Steiner states:

Christ is verily the Light which leads out of error and sin, the Light which enables man to find the way upwards. And now let us ask ourselves: What was it that was lost to man in that he descended from the spiritual world, was ensnared in desires and passions under the influence of Lucifer, and then, under Ahriman’s influence, in error, illusion and lying in the earthly world? —He lost direct vision of the spiritual world, he lost understanding of the spiritual world.

Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual-Scientific Anthropology, GA 107. Lecture: “The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers” (22 Mar 1909, Berlin)

An Unbendable Iron Will: Opposition and Disaster

Illustration. Remembrance of the First Goetheanum

Following the First World War, Rudolf Steiner had become a public figure. However, with all his success, hostility, mockery and ridicule were brewing among his opponents. Organised attacks disrupted his talks, and there were attempts at assassination.

In 1920, the Goetheanum was inaugurated as the central building of Anthroposophy, which Steiner named in Goethe’s honour. It was the outward form of spiritual science, intended to unite the trinity of art, science, and religion. However, on New Year’s Eve in 1922, the Goetheanum, which was made of wood, was destroyed by fire, whether it was an act of arson or not is unclear. A decade’s effort, not to mention an architectural wonder, was lost overnight.

Even this great disaster could not bend his iron will. He gave an address to members on New Year’s day with the flames still burning outside. He continued with the planned performance of a Christmas play and with the scheduled lecture at a nearby carpentry shop, where he referred to the tragedy, stating, “Our friends gave birth to it in love, saw it grow up in love, but now they have also had to watch it die in love.”

Executing a work of art in material form is important, but when human beings work with the right attitude, they create an imperishable work at the level of angels. The material artwork may pass away, but the spiritual work endures eternally.

The Turning Point

1923 was a difficult year, marked by division, disagreement and apathy. There is conflict—between old and new visions—within the society. A wake-up call is needed. During the Christmas Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society, in a gesture of sacrifice, Steiner would “unite his karma” with the Society and its members. After previously staying mostly outside its administration as teacher and advisor, he then took on its leadership, and refounded it as the General Anthroposophical Society. This was a turning point. Steiner laid the “Foundation Stone of Anthroposophy” in the hearts of members in the form of a mantric verse, and then focused on guiding their spiritual development through intensive esoteric training.

On the first day of 1924, Steiner suddenly fell seriously ill. Nevertheless, he continued with boundless energy to be active, and it was to be one of his most prolific years. He gave as many as five, sometimes six different lectures each day. He creates the model for the second Goetheanum, but he did not live to see its completion. Today, this inspiring architectural wonder stands defiantly in concrete.

But the inevitable moment approached when even his resilient body showed the strain of his immense work. Perhaps he knew that his time was approaching.

On the eve of Michaelmas, Steiner, frail and deathly ill, summoned the strength to passionately declare his final wish for the rebirth of the anthroposophical movement. This was to be his last talk. Steiner took to his sick-bed in the carpentry shop where he would remain until his death. Even as he lay dying, he kept active. His associates would often visit the bookstores and bring him a selection of new books. He continued directing the Anthroposophical Society and through numerous written communications he tried to reach those who could no longer listen to his spoken word.

After a prolonged period of declining health, Rudolf Steiner died in 1925, at the age of 64, in his simple wooden studio where he had been confined during the last six months of his life. A friend who was with him at the moment of his passing stated:

The dignity of his features was enhanced by the marble whiteness of death. In the stillness of the night, with only a few candles burning, it was as if ages of human history converged to do homage. With a deep sense of reverence I wondered who he was. I am wondering still.

Alfred Heidenreich, Rudolf Steiner: A Biographical Sketch

The Representative of Humanity

Soaring high above Steiner’s deceased body was the noble figure of Christ, the Representative of Humanity, which he had carved and nearly finished. The sculpture depicts the evolutionary drama of human existence. The Christ figure represents the highest humanity that has been able to unfold on Earth. He is the Redeemer, holding a balance between the opposing forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. His left arm points upwards, causing the prideful Lucifer to break his wings and fall, while His right arm points downwards, making Ahriman chain himself to the earth and remain confined in his cave. This is not to be interpreted as the Christ Being destroying the adversarial powers; rather, they are unable to bear the radiance of unconditional love and compassion flowing from Him.

Now, the two beings appear a second time beside the Representative of Humanity. The adversaries are not yet overcome, but they depict the actual current situation within our epoch. Lucifer draws people into self-love and spiritual inflation, while Ahriman pulls them into cold intellectuality and mechanical materialism. They are hooked onto one another, demonstrating the split caused in man in the way they pull him, now upwards now downwards. In this way, the two spiritual powers, which inhabit and are active in the supersensible realm, were made visible through artistic form. And this applies also in the same way to the Being of Christ.

A sixth and final figure was unexpectedly added to the sculpture in its upper left corner: the being of Cosmic Humour, serving as an antidote for the overwhelming significance of the struggle between humanity and the opposing forces. This rock-being reminds us that the cosmic drama is viewed with intense interest by beings whose future depends on the results.

The gesture of looking down with humour is significant. Human beings rise to the spiritual level not through egoistic sentimentality, but through a purity of soul that always includes humour. Thus the humorous rock-being, concerned with the harmony of spiritual forces within humanity, gazes upon the scene below, embracing it with its wings as though growing towards it from a world beyond these events.

The End

Rudolf Steiner’s tombstone in Dornach, Switzerland

Steiner was laid to rest on the grounds of the Goetheanum. Carved on his tombstone are Latin inscriptions that read: “From God we are born, In Christ we die, Through the Holy Spirit we are revived.”

Steiner himself in his spiritual development marks the birth of Anthroposophy on earth. What came from him was he himself. Anthroposophy is Steiner. He was a man beyond his time. A teacher who stood alone on the summit of a mountain and told us what he saw. His tragedy was his being so far beyond all other people.

His life, entirely devoted to the service of humanity, was met with unspeakable hostility; his path of knowledge was turned into a path of thorns. Yet he walked that path and conquered it for all of humanity. He broke through the boundaries of knowledge: they no longer exist… He taught us to understand the greatest Divine deed… How could he not be hated with all the demonic power of which hell is capable?
But he responded with love to the lack of understanding he encountered.
He died—a sufferer, a leader, an achiever,
in a world that trampled him underfoot
and which he had the strength to lift up…
“Now he is dead, he who led you to freedom,
to the light, to consciousness, to the realisation
of the Divine in the human soul,
to the Self, to Christ…
We, the demons, cannot tolerate this,
we hunt down and pursue those who dare to do such things,
with all the souls that have surrendered to us,
with all the powers at our command.
For the turning of the ages belongs to us,
this humanity, which, bereft of God,
languishes in weakness, delusion, and vice.
We will not let our spoils slip away,
we will tear apart those who dare to do such a thing.”
He dared—and bore his lot.
In love, in patience, in tolerance
with inadequacy, with human frailties…
Now he is free.