ANTHROPOSOPHY
‘In the period which now follows it will be hard to disentangle my life story from the history of the anthroposophical movement.’ These words of Rudolf Steiner’s apply to the two decades which start about 1905 and end with his death in 1925. His spiritual and physical activity was unceasing. He created anthroposophy as a spiritual science, as an art, and as a social motivation and his aim was to establish it in human minds and human societies.
His anthroposophical activity can be divided into four phases. Each is a preparation for the next, they overlap in time but can be clearly distinguished:
1. The evolution of anthroposophy, 1902-1909;
2. Art, 1910-1916;
3. The period in which the communities were established, 1919-1923;
4. From the ‘Christmas Conference’ to the death of Rudolf Steiner, 1924-1925.
The Development of Anthroposophy as a Spiritual Science (1902-1909)
From the very moment that the German branch of the Theosophical Society was founded I regarded a journal as an essential. And so Marie von Sivers and I founded the monthly journal Lucifer. The name was of course in no way linked with the spiritual power to which I later applied the same name as a designation for the force opposed to Ahriman. The name was simply intended to mean the ‘Bearer of Light’.
The number of readers increased rapidly, and later the Vienna journal Gnosis was absorbed. The name was then changed to Lucifer-Gnosis. Steiner was supported in this work by Marie von Sivers.
It was Marie von Sivers who made all this possible, for she not only contributed to the full extent of her means in a material sense but devoted all her energies to anthroposophy. The conditions in which we worked at the beginning were as primitive as can be imagined. I wrote most of the copy for Lucifer. Marie von Sivers dealt with the correspondence When a number had been got out we prepared the wrappers and addressed and stamped them, and took them to the post in a laundry basket.
Lucifer-Gnosis flourished, the number of subscribers increased—but in spite of this in 1908 it was necessary to cease publication. Excess of work, mainly owing to the constantly increasing number of lecture engagements, at first mostly in Germany but later throughout Europe, made it impossible for Steiner to continue to edit a regular monthly journal.
‘And this brought about the odd situation that a journal that was gaining subscribers with every issue had to cease publication because the editor was overburdened with work.’
Berlin continued to be the centre of activity. He continued to reside there—at 17 Motzstrasse—until after the end of the First World War. It was from there that he set out on his countless journeys. (See the Chronology at the end of the book). It was in Berlin that the Philosophical-Theosophical (later, Philosophical-Anthroposophical) Publishing House was established. This was under the management of Marie von Sivers. It was not until 1923 that the headquarters at Motzstrasse were relinquished and the publishing business was transferred to Dornach.
The articles in Lucifer and in Lucifer-Gnosis, and the lecture series, provided the original material out of which the standard works on anthroposophy were evolved.
Theosophy (1904)
The first standard work in which Rudolf Steiner brought anthroposophy to the notice of the public forms a link with Fichte: ‘This dogma presupposes a new inner organ of sense which opens up a new world and with which ordinary people are not equipped at all... Imagine a world in which everyone is born blind, so that objects, and the relationships between them, are recognized only through the sense of touch. Go among these people and speak to them of colours and other phenomena that only light and the faculty of sight can reveal. You will be talking to them about nothing, and the best thing is that they tell you so; for in this way you will soon be made aware of your error, and, unless you can open their eyes, stop wasting words.’ (Fichte, 1813)
Rudolf Steiner was made aware of the spiritual blindness of his generation and believed with every fibre of his being that it was possible to heal the blind. He did not become silent. He tried with every means at his disposal to open the spiritual eyes of his contemporaries. His Theosophy is his first direct attempt to open the eyes of the spirit of modern man through the medium of a book, no longer merely by speech, by lectures, and by personal commitment.
The first edition is dedicated to the ‘Spirit of Giordano Bruno’, the man who spiritually was born before his time and was condemned to death by the Church in 1600.
Many of the thoughts that Steiner expressed in his book are to be found in a more or less clear form in Bruno. One such is the idea of repeated life on earth.
Theosophy considers man and the world as a trinity. Body, soul, and spirit are formed from three world spheres. A human being of sound mind is aware of himself as a self-contained personality. Nevertheless he belongs to three spheres of existence:
1. The body to the physical or natural world
2. The soul to the intellectual or soul world
3. The spirit to the spiritual world
To the spiritually blind person only the first plane of existence, the physical world, is real. The intellectual or soul world is experienced as a world of shadows. The spiritual world is without reality for him. Against this, Steiner portrays the three spheres, each of which, for all the differences between them, is individually alive and active. One cannot imagine the human body in isolation without a physical world, and just as little can one imagine the subjective experience of the soul without an objective intellectual or soul world, or the individual spirit without a spiritual world. The three worlds are differentiated in and around the human being on many planes.
Theosophy was written in order to serve as an ‘introduction to the knowledge of the supernatural world and the destiny of man’.
The list of contents gives a clear indication of the arrangement of the subject matter:
The Essential Nature of the Human Being
Destiny and the Reincarnation of the Spirit
The Three Worlds
(Physical World, Soul World, Spiritual World)
The Path to Knowledge
This is not a book to be read in the way that is customary today. In a certain sense the reader has to study every page, sometimes even every sentence. (From the preface.)
This book sets out to describe some of the features of the supernatural world. Whoever is concerned only with the senses will look on this description as a phantasy without substance. But he who is searching for the road that leads out of the natural world will at once realize that human life acquires value and meaning only through insight into another world.
These sentences sketch out the spiritual journey which will bring perception of the world and human destiny into union in Steiner’s sense. The quest for knowledge of the world may serve as the motive of intellectual curiosity but it is of no avail when it comes to acquiring insight into human destiny—whatever its contribution to technical invention. For Steiner it is essential that no pronouncement shall be made that is not based on reality as an experience. It might be said that what he aims at in his philosophy of the world is ‘spiritual realism’.
The author describes nothing to which he cannot bear witness as the result of experience, the kind of experience that can be gained in this field. He proposes to describe only the things that in this sense he has experienced.
Those who knew Rudolf Steiner in his lifetime will be able to confirm that he is entitled to say these words about himself:
I will never say anything about spiritual matters that I do not know from direct spiritual experience. This is my guiding star. And this has enabled me to see through every illusion. (From a letter.)
The core of Theosophy is the chapter on Destiny and the Reincarnation of the Spirit. In a few pages the oldest human doctrine, which to a great extent still dominates the East today, is restated in western thought forms. This is done without making any reference to the past. Even Lessing, who was the first man in modern times to put forward this doctrine in a spirit of enquiry, in his Education of the Human Race, is not quoted in support of this theme. Without borrowing or seeking support from earlier authorities, Steiner gives an account of his own spiritual experience:
The human spirit must be reincarnated again and again; and the human being is governed by the law that he brings the fruits of his former life with him into the next one. The soul lives in the present. But this life in the present is not independent of the former life. The spirit that has been reincarnated brings its destiny with it from earlier incarnations. And this destiny rules his life. The impressions that the soul receives, the desires that are satisfied, the joys and sorrows that it experiences, depend on its actions in previous incarnations. The body is subject to the laws of heredity; the soul is subject to the destiny that it has itself created. This self-created destiny of man is called his karma. And the spirit is subject to the law of reincarnation.
The spirit is eternal; in corporeal existence, birth and death alternate in accordance with the laws of the physical world; the life of the soul, which is governed by destiny, provides the cohesion between the two during a life on earth.
Rudolf Steiner’s activities provide an abundance of concrete examples, with which he underpinned his doctrine. In 1924 alone, the last year in which his health allowed him to lecture, he undertook more than 60 ‘karma meditations’. These are replete with warnings not to try to get to the root of the interrelationships between two different lives on earth by indulging in intellectual subtleties. With irony, but in deep earnestness he was wont to visit his wrath on those who frivolously fabricated interrelationships between lives on earth. For him, only genuine spiritual experiences counted as the gaining of insight into earlier lives on earth. Even these should be used with the utmost caution in relating one case to another. But there are certain fundamental laws, such as:
Someone who is in the habit of lying, or is inclined to make assumptions lightly will be a frivolous person in a later incarnation, for what we think, how we think, and our attitude to the truth, in short everything that is inherent in this incarnation, will be the yardstick for our behaviour in the next incarnation.
Throughout his life Steiner furnished many examples of the working of destiny, and of how what was the seed in one life must needs bear fruit in the next and following lives. Selfless love creates joy, which in the third incarnation blossoms out as a naturally open-hearted disposition. From hate and antipathy is born suffering, which produces folly and a stunted intellectual life in the third incarnation. In this sense the karma is bound by iron laws. But by education and self-tuition it can be made subject to regulation. Just as a river has its natural course which can be regulated by human intervention, so man has the opportunity and the freedom to influence the course of his own destiny.
This doctrine of reincarnation and karma is, in association with Christology, at the heart of anthroposophy. Rudolf Steiner was wholly taken up with the belief that this idea could give sense and purpose to western man, and hence to humanity.
Just as once the time was ripe for the acceptance of the Copernican world philosophy, so the time has now come to inculcate into humanity at large the doctrine of reincarnation and karma.
Christian Morgenstern, Steiner’s pupil, has in a diary the following entry dated 1911, which points in the same direction:
The doctrine of reincarnation has been in circulation for a long time. But for a while it had to be thrust into a corner—the whole of European civilization derives from this neglect. Now this cycle has run its course, and reincarnation can return to the main stream of western development, bringing with it immeasurable blessings; two thousand years after Christ’s time on earth, in a way that is new, and totally different than ever before, it will once again enrich, enlighten, and redeem mankind.
In Theosophy Steiner for the first time describes the fourfold, or sevenfold, nature of man; of this description we will now offer a brief synopsis.
In nature, three steps lead up to man: mineral, plant, animal. These three natural realms are manifestations of three spheres of existence, to which also man belongs. Consider together and individually:
a rock-crystal
a rose in bloom
a startled deer.
Let these three natural objects work on you. The rock-crystal typifies the mineral world. It occupies space, but has no life. It consists of its components in juxtaposition; chemically speaking its constituents are the elements silicon and oxygen (SiO2) and it is constructed in accordance with the laws of physics. It is hexagonal.
The rose represents the vegetable world. While it too occupies space, this space is constantly changing its shape. It has life, which is manifested in time in a succession of states: seed, shoot, blossom, and fruit.
The deer, like any other animal, occupies three spheres. Like the mineral it has its spatial body, which remains as a carcass when life ends. Like a plant it develops in a temporal dimension: embryo, fawn, mature deer. Its life is bounded by conception and death. A third element, lacking to minerals and plants, is added: vital force, the capacity to experience desire and aversion, the instincts.
In man there is a fourth element, the ego, which has the power to think, to feel, and to will.
Since the human being has a body, which in death becomes a corpse, he belongs to the mineral world. This Steiner calls his physical body. In that he is a being living in the time dimension, in which growth, propagation, metabolism, circulation occur, the human being resembles the plants. This second element, which corresponds to what Aristotle calls the vegetative soul, this system of life-shaping forces he calls the ethereal body. As a being possessing desires and urged on by passion, experiencing desire and aversion, man is related to the animals. This ‘animal soul’ in Aristotle’s sense he calls the astral body. The fourth element, which makes man what he is, which distinguishes him from the animals, and whereby he is endowed with power to act as a spirit among spirits, is the ego.
Note that there is no conflict between this description of the human being as made up from four elements and the trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit. It differentiates between that part of the body which draws its substance from the mineral world and returns to it on death and that part which constitutes life and whose nature is non-natural, supernatural, that is to say ethereal.
The use of the term astral body to describe the soul will at first jar on those at least who are unfamiliar with the works of Paracelsus, Jakob Boehme, etc. Steiner’s reasons for not jettisoning this mystical term may well be linked with the dependence of animal and human life on astral influences (in some sort a justification of astrology). Steiner differentiates further between the various planes on which the human mind is operative within the astral body:
the lower astral body (linked with the instinct to feed and propagate)
the sentient soul
the intellectual soul
the consciousness-soul.
The human ego, refining and changing the three lower elements, predisposes them to become higher elements leading on beyond the ego and forging links with the Divine.
The final section of Theosophy has the title: The Path of Knowledge—and this introduces another central tenet of anthroposophy, without the understanding of which everything else would be left hanging in the air.
Someone who seeks to base his philosophy of the world on spiritual perceptions must bear within himself the certainty that these perceptions are not merely subjective in character. He must possess the faculty of distinguishing illusions, hallucinations, and phantasies of all kinds from reality, treating them in just the same way as a person for whom only the natural world has meaning needs to treat his life experiences, if he is to retain his spiritual health. If a natural scientist needs a thorough training in method if he is to achieve results in his chosen field, how much more does a spiritual scientist like Rudolf Steiner need constant methodical spiritual training and practice if he is to achieve spiritual objectivity. Flights of phantasy, a tendency to self-deception, auto-suggestion, have to be seen for what they are and overcome. This explains why in all the occult disciplines of the past ‘the path of knowledge’ leads through ‘purging’, through ‘purification’ of the human soul before there can be any question of enlightenment. Immediately after the publication of Theosophy, Steiner turned his attention to this other main theme. He dealt with the subject in a series of articles, of which the first appeared in 1904 and which were finally published in book form in 1909: How to Know Higher Worlds.
How to Know Higher Worlds (1904-1909)
There is a body of literature from the Indian theosophical tradition which contains advice on training in the occult. But in the West as far as we know there is nothing comparable to Steiner’s second standard work on anthroposophy. Oriental occultists at the time actually regarded this publication as a ‘betrayal of the mysteries’.
‘In every human being faculties lie dormant by the exercise of which he can gain knowledge of higher spheres.’ Thoughts and words like these break down the tradition going back for millennia according to which the ‘hidden knowledge’ can live only in the custody of shielded esoteric circles. Rudolf Steiner starts from the opposite assumption. For him this is the end of the age in which a small circle of informed initiates, living in strict isolation from the rest of mankind more or less in a state of dream-like ignorance, sought to direct history by drawing on sources of hidden knowledge. ‘The time has come,’ says the man with the lamp in Goethe’s esoteric fable. The time has come. Rudolf Steiner was motivated by the same impulse.
Everyone today must quite freely open up his conscious mind to spiritual truths and journey by way of the sciences and the knowledge of the natural world that they reveal to him, and which he accepts, and so attain knowledge of the world of the soul and the spirit. But this requires discipline, and practice. This discipline begins on the ‘path of reverence’. Unless the feeling of respect, devotion, veneration is cultivated, there will be no soil in which inward growth can be nurtured. Cynicism, mockery, fault-finding are enemies of more fully matured powers. It is not blank wonder that is meant, such as may be of great benefit to children, but ‘reverence for truth and knowledge’.
Experience shows that those people bear themselves best who have learned to venerate where veneration is due. And it is due whenever it comes from the depths of the heart.
And feelings are to the soul what nourishment is to the body that it feeds ... Veneration, respect, devotion are the nourishment of the soul that keeps it healthy and strong: above all, strengthened for the activity of knowing.
It may be said that even for one who is by no means inclined to become a ‘scholar of the spirit’ this book can be a veritable compendium of advice on the restoration of mental health—and indeed it has already been so to many. There is room here for only a few of his precepts:
The heights of the spirit can only be ascended by entering at the gate of humility.
If when I meet a man I censure his weakness I deprive myself of the power to attain to higher knowledge; if in a spirit of love I look for what is praiseworthy in him, I am storing up this power.
The knowledge that you seek merely to enhance your knowledge, merely to store up treasures for yourself, will lead you astray from your road; but the knowledge that you seek in order to ennoble mankind and advance the development of the world will carry you a step forward.
Every idea that does not become to you an ideal destroys an active principle in your mind; but every idea that becomes to you an ideal creates vital forces in you.
So order all your acts and words as not to encroach upon the free will of any man.
Create for yourself moments of inner repose and in these moments learn to distinguish the essential from the non-essential.
It will always be found that those who possess real knowledge are the most unassuming and that nothing is further from their thoughts than what men call the lust for power.
Even the wisest can learn an infinite amount from children.
If you do not understand something, rather than condemn, do not judge at all.
You must set aside all prejudices.
Without sound common sense every step you take will be in vain.
Learn to be silent about your spiritual visions.
The golden rule is: whenever you attempt to take one step forward in the knowledge of hidden truths, take three steps forward towards the perfection of your character for good.
As a rule, to tread the path of inner growth is given only to those who with energy and perseverance devote themselves to mastering their thoughts and feelings, and the impulses of their will. The resources for such self-control and spiritual activity are derived from meditation, practised in complete stillness. By such concentration and meditation, pursued with inward energy, even a Westerner can attain to knowledge of higher spheres commensurate with the degree of his own development. Rudolf Steiner wrote this book as an aid to the seekers after these matters.
Theologians of both Christian confessions have objected to the meditative path of spiritual exercises on the grounds that it is a means to ‘self-redemption’ that is in contradiction with the fundamental Christian doctrine of Grace and Redemption through Jesus Christ. This is a valid objection. All the instructions that Rudolf Steiner gave to those practising meditation are about what the human being does and can do. And Steiner’s first concern was that people should not take life as it comes but develop the highest degree of creative activity. But what is the scope of this inner activity? In addition to other faculties that it is intended to develop, it must restore to the hollow human being of today the capacity for inner peace, for hearing and listening, for veneration and devotion. It is in this way that he will encounter the Heavenly Grace that is as essential to the growth of the soul as the sun is to plants. The law that applies above all to the domain of knowledge is that no one acquires higher knowledge who has not conceived it. And this power to conceive means above all patience, the ability to wait, expectation. Greed for knowledge harms the striver after knowledge.
There is a need, without talking a great deal about the concept of grace, to do something practical about it.
There is a need at the present day to suppress the ‘greed for knowledge’. Rather should we say to ourselves: Grace has revealed to me certain truths, and I will wait patiently until further truths come to me.
This is a practical lesson in the exploration of the spiritual spheres, particularly in their relation to the phenomenon of Christ. It is a radical error in man to suppose that he can grasp that which reaches him as it were in a passive way. For we must be conscious that we can only be what we are intended to be if the spiritual powers judge us so to be. And anything we do by way of meditation, contemplation, and so on serves only to open our eyes and is not the means whereby we grasp those truths which are to be revealed to us and which we may not pursue (From Jesus to Christ, lecture of 8 October 1911).
The human being must play his part to the utmost. Only then can he put his trust in Grace. The words: ‘And of his fullness have we all received, and grace for grace’ (John 1,16) are applicable in their fullest sense to Steiner.
An Outline of Esoteric Science
In this third standard work on anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner goes beyond the scope of the first two in that he introduces a general cosmology. This book appeared in 1910 and brings together much of the material which embodies the results of his spiritual research, which he had added to bit by bit over the years in which he was giving study courses. The central themes of Theosophy, the nature of the human being, and of How to Know Higher Worlds, the schooling path, are here looked at from a new point of view. However he has added the all-important chapter: ‘Cosmic Evolution and the Human Being’.
The title An Outline of Esoteric Science can quite easily give rise to misunderstandings. Something ‘esoteric’ is made public; something that has been hidden, esoteric, as far as our senses are concerned, but which is brought to light by the spirit. This is ‘revealed knowledge’ in the truest sense of the word.
In his preface Steiner comes to grips with all the objections and strictures that can possibly be made about a book of this nature. He finds it quite understandable that scientists should accuse the author of dilettantism, ignorance, and even worse. In answer, Steiner points out that he had himself made a thorough study of science and that he had made it a rule only to speak or write about those matters in the field of spiritual knowledge where he was able to state, in a manner that seemed satisfactory to himself, what present-day science knows about them.
Throughout his life he had demonstrated many times that he was entitled to speak in this way. Only one instance will be mentioned here. According to the book, the visible world originated in a spiritual ‘thermal element’ in which exalted godlike beings (the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones of Jewish-Christian terminology) offered sacrifices and did the work of creation. Ten years after the publication of the book Rudolf Steiner gave a course of fourteen lectures on this thermal theory for scientists and teachers in which he demonstrated that he had the facts of thermodynamics right down to their mathematical principles at his fingertips. It would be going too far in this monograph to attempt an account of the contents of An Outline of Esoteric Science. The reader who wishes to study them must turn to the book itself. But there is one fact that we cannot ignore. In the Philosophy of Freedom, Theosophy, and How to Know Higher Worlds you will look in vain for the name of Jesus Christ. Many people have wondered why this should be so. At least as early as 1900 the appearance of Jesus Christ on earth had become for Rudolf Steiner the central historical event of the world and of humanity. Witness Christianity as Mystical Fact. So why is it that in these works Steiner does not mention Christ and Christianity? Our reply would be: because he was a Christian. ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain’ was a commandment that Steiner observed in using the name of Jesus Christ. He used this exalted name very sparingly and uttered it only when the circumstances made it necessary. And in relation to An Outline of Esoteric Science the circumstances did make it necessary.