An Introduction to Rudolf Steiner by Michael Holdrege Rudolf Steiner devoted his whole life to overcoming the gulf between

science, art and religion, between clear scientific thinking and the belief in higher realities. Already at the age of twenty five, Steiner had formulated the nature of this problem and shown, in reference to the German poet and scientist Goethe, a much wider perspective: Goethes world view is the most many sided imaginable. It issues from a center resting within the unified nature of the poet and it always turns outward, the side corresponding to the nature of the object being considered. The unity of the spiritual forces being exercised lies in Goethes nature. The way these forces are exercised at any given moment is determined by the object under consideration. Goethe takes his way of looking at things from the outer world and does not force any particular way upon it. What Steiner characterizes in regard to Goethes world view, is true to an even larger extent of his own, but Steiner was not only a thinker. His multi-dimensional approach to questions of practical life has also borne significant fruit. Steiner was in fact, the founder of numerous impulses for the renewal of human society: from the largest non-sectarian school movement in the world Waldorf education to the creation of new forms of organic agriculture, holistic medicine, pharmacology and education for the developmentally handicapped. Not only was he a pioneer in the realm of the arts and architecture, but his ideas have also stimulated new approaches in banking and organizational development. How could a man capable of initiating such numerous impulses relevant to the crisis of modern civilization, remain almost unknown in the twentieth century world? There are many entry ways into the work of Rudolf Steiner. His Collected Works of over 360 volumes can be quite dismaying for the potential student. Theosophy is one good starting point, Steiner himself called it an introduction. Nonetheless he is careful to point out that the words of Goethe with which chapter1 begins are, the starting point of one of the paths that lead to being able to recognize the true nature of the human being. Theosophy is a starting point and it is the exposition of one possible way to approach the human riddle. Such an observation is characteristic of Rudolf Steiner. Throughout his books and lecture cycles, he continually approaches fundamental questions of human existence from new and different perspectives. He was a consistent opponent of dogmatically held views that seek to frame the depths of reality in rigid systems of thought. Rudolf Steiner published Theosophy after two decades as a researcher and author, primarily in the fields of philosophy and the theory of science. During these two decades he was the editor of Goethes natural scientific works in two major editions, the editor of a twelve volume edition of Schopenhauers works and of an eight volume edition of Jean Paul. He was editor in chief of the Journal for Literature in Berlin for several years, and his cultural and scientific essays written for various journals within this period fill five volumes totalling approximately three thousand pages. In addition the these activities he authored eight books during this phase of his life: The Science of Knowing, Truth and Knowledge, The Philosophy of Freedom, Friedrich Nietzsche Fighter for Freedom, Goethes World Conception, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, and Christianity as Mystical Fact. Theosophy was a surprise to many. Known as a prodigious student of past and modern thought, Steiner seemed to have suddenly overstepped the boundaries of accepted scientific thinking. This reaction did not surprise Steiner, he was after all, an expert on questions of scientific method. In fact, it was just this issue that he consciously raised with this book: Have the limits of scientific discourse been rightfully drawn? He characterized his spiritual scientific method, which he later called Anthroposophy, as one that in the full sense of the word, recognizes and supports the current view of natural scientific research where it is justified. On the other hand, it strives through the rigorous and ordered training of purely inward (soul) faculties, to achieve exact and objective results about supersensible realms of existence. It gives validity only to those results won by inner soul observation, in which the soul-spiritual organization can be grasped and overviewed, as exactly as a mathematical problem. (Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy pp 7-8, translation Michael Holdrege). Rudolf Steiner was acutely aware not only of the significance of modern scientific thought, but also of its limitations. He strove to overcome the reduction of the scientifically knowable world, to those aspects of reality accessible only to outer empiricism and mathematical quantification, while at the same time upholding the rigor and objectivity that distinguishes science from opinion. But to expand the

scientific method into deeper aspects of existence is not a simple matter. It demands the careful and exacting training of faculties that are for the most part dormant in the human soul today. Rudolf Steiner went to considerable pains to characterize the way in which such faculties can be developed, for without such training the possibilities for error and illusion are immense. In the lecture cycle The Boundaries of Natural Science, for example, he frames this task in the context of modern science. A more general exposition of these issues is in How to Know Higher Worlds (previously titled Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment), which gives a short introduction to these questions in the last chapter. It is before this background that Theosophy appears as one way by which the essential nature of human beings can be known. The demands of spiritual science are present not only for the researcher, demands are also made of the reader. As Theosophy unfolds, dimensions of human existence not accessible to everyday experience are revealed, presenting a significant challenge to the reader. If he or she is to find a fruitful relationship to such supersensible observations, a new kind of reading is necessary. As Steiner says in the Preface to the Third Edition, The book cannot be read the way people ordinarily read books in this day and age. In some respects, its readers will have to work their way through each page and even each single sentence the hard way. This was done deliberately, it is the only way this book can become what it is intended to be for the reader. Simply reading it through is as good as not reading it at all. The spiritual scientific truths it contains must be experienced, that is the only way they can be of value. The book is consciously written in a manner that requires enhanced activity by the reader, its readers will have to work their way through each page and even each single sentence, which is to say that the contents are not painless injections of spiritual knowledge, to be received effortlessly and directly into the flow of the readers consciousness, but rather it is what the reader does that is of primary significance. To become inwardly active to an extent far beyond that required by most reading, is the challenge of Rudolf Steiners books. If we read Theosophy in an everyday manner, it can appear to be nothing but a systematic description of sensible and supersensible members of the human being, a description that can be believed or not believed, depending on ones disposition. Steiner was clear about this, I have often pointed out that there are two ways of reading a book like my Theosophy. One is to read, The human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc. and lives repeated earth lives and has a karma, etc. A reader of this kind is taking concepts. They are of course, rather different concepts than one finds elsewhere, but the mental process that is going on is in many respects identical with what takes place when one studies a cookbook. My point was exactly that the process is the important thing, not the absorption of ideas. It makes no difference whether you are reading, Put butter into a frying pan, add flour, stir, add the beaten eggs, etc. or There is physical matter, etheric forces, astral forces and they interpenetrate each other. It is all one from the standpoint of the soul process involved whether butter, eggs and flour are being mixed at a stove or the human entelechy is conceived as a mixture of physical, etheric and astral bodies. But one can also read Theosophy in such a manner as to realize that it contains concepts that stand in the same relation to the world of ordinary physical concepts as the latter does to the dream world. They belong to a world to which one has to awaken out of the ordinary physical realm in just the way one wakes out of ones dream world into the physical. It is the attitude one has in reading that gives things the right colouring. (Awakening to Community p.158) Steiner does not simply give a systematic cookbook description of the human being at different levels of existence. The concepts presented at the beginning of the book grow, differentiate and develop in a manner that easily goes unnoticed to the casual reader. What appears at first to be mere definitions, reveal themselves to careful study as many faceted realities of human existence, which undergo a metamorphosis as the book progresses. To enter into the expansion and transformation of these ideas, to make the subtle observations necessary to ground them in ones own experience, is not easy. It requires a heightened level of activity and concentration. And yet it is just in this more which a book such as Theosophy necessitates, that its deeper fruitfulness for us lies. We begin to exercise those faculties of cognition which allow us with time to experience the realms of existence spoken of by Rudolf Steiner. Just as a muscle grows only through abnormal demands put upon it, so in a similar manner, do our inner faculties as well. Theosophy An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. Classic Translation by Rvd. M Cotterell and A.P Shepherd. ISBN9781855841314 also know as Theosophy An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos. Modern Translation ISBN 9780880103732 Rudolph Steiner (1910)

Rudolf Steiner Press. www.rudolfsteinerpress.com You can visit Rudolf Steiner House and purchase a copy from the Rudolf Steiner Bookshop there http://www.rsh.anth.org.uk/pages/house_fac.html Or you can download the Theosophy book online at: Sacred Texts http://www.sacredtexts.com/eso/theo/index.htm Steiner Books Spiritual Research Archive http://steinerbooks.org/research/archive.php Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books? id=iUHaehP9BDQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Theosophy+Steiner+An+introduction+to+the+spiritual +processes+in+human+life+and+in+the+cosmos&source=bl&ots=0qMYiS9rmw&sig=TuKM2mDzSi 8Od6jumsBRRIl2m4&hl=en&ei=KZk1TaaGG4iqhAeQzN3KCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ve d=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage