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Rudolf Steiner

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• Famous Philosophers - Rudolf Steiner
• Anthroposophical Society in America - Rudolf Steiner
• Anthroposophie Switzerland - Biography of Rudolf Steiner
• Steiner Education Australia - Biography of Rudolf Steiner
• Academia - Rudolf Steiner - An Esoteric Profile
• Official Site of The Rudolf Steiner Archive
• Rudolf Steiner Archiv - Biography of Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner (born February 27, 1861, Kraljević, Austria—died March 30, 1925, Dornach, Switzerland) was an Austrian-born spiritualist, lecturer, and founder of anthroposophy , a movement based on the notion that there is a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but accessible only to the highest faculties of mental knowledge.

Attracted in his youth to the works of Goethe , Steiner edited that poet’s scientific works and from 1889 to 1896 worked on the standard edition of his complete works at Weimar. During this period he wrote his Die Philosophie der Freiheit (1894; “The Philosophy of Freedom”), then moved to Berlin to edit the literary journal Magazin für Literatur and to lecture. Coming gradually to believe in spiritual perception independent of the senses, he called the result of his research “anthroposophy,” centring on “knowledge produced by the higher self in man.” In 1912 he founded the Anthroposophical Society .

Steiner believed that humans once participated more fully in spiritual processes of the world through a dreamlike consciousness but had since become restricted by their attachment to material things. The renewed perception of spiritual things required training the human consciousness to rise above attention to matter. The ability to achieve this goal by an exercise of the intellect is theoretically innate in everyone.

In 1913 at Dornach, near Basel , Switzerland , Steiner built his first Goetheanum, which he characterized as a “school of spiritual science.” After a fire in 1922, it was replaced by another building. The Waldorf School movement, derived from his experiments with the Goetheanum, by the early 21st century had more than 1,000 schools around the world. Other projects that grew out of Steiner’s work include communities for persons with disabilities; a therapeutic clinical centre at Arlesheim, Switzerland; scientific and mathematical research centres; and schools of drama, speech, painting, and sculpture. Among Steiner’s varied writings are The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1894), Occult Science: An Outline (1913), and Story of My Life (1924).

Biography work

Biography work is a retrospective process that consists in looking at one's life and how it has unfolded on various fronts, and trying to discern meaning and patterns into it. This implies taking a step back and contemplating the highs and lows that one has lived, to gain a deeper understanding of one's life lessons and journey.

The process may include elements such as:

• especially the rhythms of seven years and eighteen years (lunar nodes); see Man's life development .
• relationships, both new people that enter one's life, and others that move to the background or dissappear
• life hardships such as illness and losses
• if done for another person and not oneself, this may include the person's death chart
• 2 Inspirational quotes
• 3 Illustrations
• 4.1 1907-02-28-GA055
• 4.2 1909-11-11-GA058
• 4.3 1912-01-23-GA135
• 4.4 1917-05-29-GA176
• 4.5 More references to be added
• 5.1 Note 1 - Notes about biography work
• 6 Related pages
• 7.1 Further
• 7.2 Specific examples
• The personalities covered by Rudolf Steiner in the Karmic Relationship lectures have been subject of biographical case studies, see Karma research case studies and the references to a.o. Wolfgang Schuchhardt and Norbert Glas.

Inspirational quotes

The unexamined life is not worth living

Illustrations

FMC00.237 depicts Life Chart diagram diagram by George O'Neill based on Steiner's lecture of 1924-08-16-GA311 (by Florin Lowndes, see publication under references for an excellent book). This diagram is often used and appears in many books for personal biography work.

Schema FMC00.531 depicts a simple metaphoric image for the main karmic patterns, challenges and debts in one's life or incarnation.

On the upper left is represented the accounting 'balance sheet' of karmic unbalances as a result of many previous lives, the 'book of lives' (part of Man's higher spiritual self or Individuality), also called ' causal body' in theosophy. In the accounting image, each life delivers like the equivalent of 'annual results' that is added to the balance sheet in the process and journey between death and a new birth .

When we investigate our current life with biography work and karma exercises (on the right), we will find particularities, obvious or recurrent challenges, curious patterns. Some don't seem to belong in our experience of this current life, and/or may be an odd aspect of our Personality, even though we feel and have to acknowledge they are an intrinsic part of our true self (and Individuality ). Depending on the individual, the process may include spontaneous Past life memories , whereby certain karmic patterns may clearly point to a particular previous incarnation. Importantly, the patterns are typically interwoven with relationships with key people in our lives (their role, impact, the period of our life) see Karmic relationships .

Rudolf Steiner gave examples of the above with the Karma research case studies about the KRI - Karmic Relationships Individualities .

During the journey between death and a new birth , before incarnating the soul develops a life plan in the spiritual world, and so each life has a selection of challenges to work and balance out these karmic unbalances - see a.o. Schema FMC00.287 . The image of the slide projector depicts how patterns seen in one life stem from elements from various previous lives shown here as overlay slides.

Initiation is the process of fast tracking this process (versus the 'wheel of karma') by taking on this work on our human character consciously during incarnate life with daily initiation exercises .

Lecture coverage and references

Rudolf Steiner lectures from the book 'Biography' (and GA volumes added, tbc):

1907-02-28-GA055

1909-11-11-ga058, 1912-01-23-ga135.

The first step is in some degree to practise the normal kind of self-cognition, which consists in looking back over one's life and asking oneself: ·         What kind of person have I been? ·         Have I been a person with a strong inclination for reflection, for inner contemplation; or am I one who has always had more love for the sensations of the outer world, liking or disliking this or that in everyday life? ·         Was I a child who at school liked reading but not arithmetic, one who liked to hit other children but did not like being hit? ·         Or was I a child always bound to be bullied and not smart enough to bully others? ·        It is well to look back on one's life in this way, and especially to ask oneself: ·         Was I cut out for activities of the mind or of the will? ·         What did I fund easy or difficult? ·         What happened to me that I would like to have avoided? ·         What happenings made me say to myself: “I am glad this has come to pass ”— and so on. It is good to look back on one's life in a certain way, and above all to envisage clearly those things that one did not like . All this leads to a more intimate knowledge of the inner kernel of our being. For example, a son who would have liked to become a poet was destined by his father to be a craftsman, and a craftsman he became, although he would sooner have been a poet. It is well to know clearly what we really wanted to be, and what we have become against our will, to visualise what would have suited us in the time of our youth but was not our lot, and then, again, what we would have liked to avoid. All that I am saying refers, of course, to life in the past, not in the future — that would be a false conception. We must therefore be quite clear as to what such a retrospect into the past means; it tells us what we did not want, what we would have liked to avoid . When we have made that clear to ourselves, we really have a picture of those things in our life which have pleased us least. That is the essential point. And we must now try to live into a very remarkable conception: we must desire and will everything that we have not desired or willed. We must imagine to ourselves: What should I actually have become if I had ardently desired everything that in fact I did not wish for and which really went against the grain in life? In a certain sense we must here rule out what we have succeeded in overcoming, for the most important thing is that we should ardently wish or picture ourselves wishing for the things we have not desired, or concerning which we have not been able to carry out our wishes, so that we create for ourselves, in feeling and thought, a being hitherto unfamiliar to us. We must picture ourselves as this being with great intensity. If we can do this, if we can identify ourselves with the being we have ourselves built up in this way, we have made some real progress towards becoming acquainted with the inner soul-kernel of our being; for in the picture we have thus been able to make of our own personality there will arise something that we have not been in this present incarnation but which we have introduced into it. Our deeper being will emerge from the picture built up in this way. ... If you call up the counterpart of yourself, the following thought will dawn upon you. This counterpart — difficult as it may be to realise it as a picture of yourself in this life — is nevertheless connected with you, and you cannot disown it . Once it appears, it will follow you, hover before your soul and crystallise in such a way that you will realise that it has something to do with you, but certainly not with your present life. And then there develops the perception that this picture is derived from an earlier life. ... If we wish to discover what gifts we may probably have possessed in a former incarnation (here I must remind you that we are speaking of probabilities!) — if we wish to know what intellectual or artistic faculties, say, we possessed in a former incarnation, it is well to reflect upon those things for which we have least talent in the present life. the fact becomes apparent that the external career of a man in one incarnation, when it is not merely a career but also an inner vocation, passes over in his next incarnation into the inward shaping of his bodily organs. Thus, if a man has been an exceptionally good mathematician in one incarnation, the mastery he has obtained over numbers and figures remains with him and goes into a special development of his sense-organs, for instance, of the eyes. People with very good sight have it as a result of the fact that in their former incarnation they thought in forms; they took this thinking in forms with them and during the life between death and rebirth they worked specially on the shaping of their eyes. Here the mathematical talent has passed into the eyes and no longer exists as a gift for mathematics. Another case known to occultists is where an individuality in one incarnation lived with intensity in architectural forms; these experiences lived as forces in his inner soul-life and worked strongly upon the instrument of hearing, so that in his next incarnation he became a great musician. He did not appear as a great architect, because the perception of form necessary for architecture was transformed into an organ-building force, so that there was nothing left but a supreme sensitiveness for music. just as we must reflect upon whatever did not please us and conceive of ourselves as having had an intense desire for it, so we must also reflect upon those things for which we have the least talent, and about which we are stupid. If we discover the dullest sides of our nature, they may very probably point to those fields in which we were most brilliant in our previous incarnation. the outer capacities we acquire are so closely connected with earthly circumstances that we cannot speak of them reappearing in the same form in the next incarnation; they are transformed into forces and in that way pass over to a subsequent incarnation. For instance, people who have a special faculty for learning languages in one incarnation will not have this in the next; instead, they will have the faculty which enables them to form more unbiassed judgments than those who had less talent for languages; these latter will tend to form one-sided judgments. If a man follows up these ideas, so that he says: “I will strongly desire and will to be what I have become against my will, and also that for which I have the least capacity” — he can know that the conceptions he thus obtains will build up the picture of his preceding incarnation. This picture will arise in great precision if he is earnest and serious about the things just described. He will observe that from the whole way in which the conceptions coalesce, he will either feel: “This picture is quite near to me”; or he will feel: “This picture is a long, long way off.” If through the elaboration of these conceptions, such a picture of the previous incarnation arises before a man's soul, he will, as a rule, he able to estimate how faded the picture is. The following feeling will come as an experience: “I am standing here; but the picture before me could not be my father, my grandfather, or my great-grandfather.” If however the student allows the picture to work upon him, his feeling and perception will lead him to the opinion: “Others are standing between me and this picture.” Let us for a moment assume that the student has the following feeling. It becomes apparent to him that between him and the picture stand twelve persons; another may perhaps feel that between him and the picture stand seven persons; but in any event the feeling is there and is of the greatest significance. If, for instance, there are twelve persons between oneself and the picture, this number can be divided by three, and the result will be four, and this may represent the number of centuries that have elapsed since the last incarnation. Thus a man who felt that there were twelve people standing between him and the picture, would say: “My preceding incarnation took place four centuries ago.”— This is given merely as an example; it will only actually be so in a very few cases, but it conveys the idea. Most people will find that they can in this way rightly estimate when they were incarnated before. Only the preparatory steps, of course, are rather difficult.

1917-05-29-GA176

More references to be added.

1918-01-08, 1918-01-11 and 1918-01-12

1921-06-17 and 1921-06-18

Note 1 - Notes about biography work

Below is a quick dump with a train of thoughts or elements used in life review (from personal experience).

This is currently not structured or worked out; it remains to be polished, structured and developed - however it provides a first basis that can be elaborated. Feedback of contributors welcomed to develop this topic page and Discussion section and enrich it with more notes.

• relevant topic pages with contextual background info, and for inspiration: Seven year rhythm
• people that come in and go out of your life, eg sometimes this can be linked in an amazing way to the seven year periods, but just be neutral and objective and let the data speak, don't try to force or manoever for any patterns
• are certain seven year periods stable, other chaotic bringing lots of changes? try to make a balance and also look at the seven year period center as potential turning points
• link the above to the planetary and karmic qualities of the seven year periods - see Schema FMC00.236 and variants
• first in your life overall
• then more granular for each seven year cycle
• draw them in circles of soul proximity or importance
• in family blood line, include parents+grandparents and children+grandchildren for different life phases and generations
• 2 - lifelong friends (extended period)
• 3 - context/purpose-connected, eg through work (collegues)
• important influences in the world during your life
• personalities you met and who were maybe not close but were important and/or impactful
• who 'gave you', nurtured you, sponsored your life, believed in you, gave you a push in the back .. sometimes people arise out of nowhere that for some reason seem to have an invisible sympathy and arrange things for you to happen, meditate on the invisible energy or resonance in view of potential karmic meaning
• did you make peace, or left an open vendetta or friction at the balance of the end of your life? is there still something to correct or rectify if you could, to act pro-actively during life, karma-wise?
• can you discern patterns in your blood-line of characteristics that are not physical bodily characteristics but soul characteristics (eg conflicts that family members share because of being too strongly focused on principles or values, patterns that are in common and affect their life, that several family members have to deal with) - link family karma
• relevant topic pages with contextual background info, and for inspiration: Karmic relationships
• list the top ten highlights of your life (where you felt happy, on top of the life energy, proud, ..)
• and the top ten lowpoints (things you were down, ashamed, hit rock bottom, ..)
• meditate on what led to these, what preceeded, who gave you a tip, did you meet some person through someone else, how did you feel before or why did you go to a certain place, what 'wanted to happen or unfold'
• Karma exercises
• Q00.006 - spiritual events at various points in life
• take a step back and try to see for yourself, by zooming in and slowing down the film of your life, what led to something that you picked up, and how you eventually left it. What did it bring you, what did you get out of it? Did you carry it forward with you, did it influence you further on, or change you? in what way(s)?
• what does the list of activities tell: are they individual challenges or group-connected? are there common themes? what meaning would you see in there, if it were symbolic?

Related pages

• Man's life development
• Man - the human being
• Cosmic breathing
• Humanity is getting younger

References and further reading

• Friedrich Hiebel: 'Biographik und Essayistik' (1970)
• Der Lebenslauf als Kunstwerk. Rhythmen, Leitmotive, Gesetze in gegenübergestellten Biographien (1966)
• Das Erwachen des Geigers und andere Erzählungen von Schicksalsruf, Krankheit und Genesung (1930, 1990)
• Barbara Nordmeyer: Lebenkrisen und ihre Bewältigung (1975)
• George and Gisela O'Neil: 'The human life' (1990, third printing 1998)
• Taking charge - your life patterns and their meaning (1997 in EN, third printing 2011; first published in German in 1992 as 'Das Leben in die Hand nehmen')
• Biographical work - The anthroposophical basis (2007 in EN, fifth printing 2014; first published in Portuguese in 2002 as 'Bases Antroposoficas da Metodologia Biografica')
• Mechtild Oltmann-Wendenburg: 'Sternstunden der Biographie (1998)
• Das biographische Urphänomen. Vom Geheimnis des menschlichen Lebenslaufes (1998)
• Der menschliche Lebenslauf als Kunstwerk (2011)
• Individuelle Entfaltung – was heißt das eigentlich? Über das Ich-Rätsel in der Biografie (2018)
• Signe Eklund Schaefer: 'Why on Earth?: Biography and the Practice of Human Becoming' (2013)
• Albrecht Klaus: Levenssinn im Lebenslauf - Biografiearbeit als Begenung mit sich und Anderen (2016)
• Rudolf Steiner: Biography - enlightening the path of human life (compiled and edited by Erhard Fucke) (2009 in EN, first published in German in 1996 as 'Vom Lebenslauf des Menschen')
• Mathias Wais: Ich bin, was ich werden könnte: Entwicklungschancen des Lebenslaufs - Anregungen für die Biographiearbeit (2021)
• 'Biography Log-book' and 'Companion Guide'
• Lili Chavannes, Ate Koopmans, Paul Wormer, Nothart M. Rohlfs: 'Blick aufs Karma: Schicksalselemente im Lebenslauf' (2004)
• Man's life development#References and further reading
• More sources on the topic of initiation#Spiritual biographies

Specific examples

• Fred Poeppig: 'Abenteuer meines Lebens: Versuch einer Lebensrückschau aus karmischer Sicht' (1975)
• Herbert Hahn: 'Der Weg, der mich führte. Lebenserinnerungen.' (1969)
• see the many biographies on the Indivividualities mentioned in the Karmic Relationship courses, see Karma research case studies

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Home » About » Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner

A sketch of his life and work.

by: John Davy

In 1899, Steiner’s life began to change quite rapidly. Only later did he give a more personal glimpse of his inner struggles, which matured into a far-reaching decision during the 1890s. On August 28, 1899 he published in his magazine a surprising article about Goethe’s mysterious ‘fairy tale’, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. The essay was entitled ‘Goethe’s Secret Revelation’, and pointed definitely, if discreetly, to the ‘occult’ significance of this story. The article attracted the attention of a Count and Countess Brockdorff, who invited Steiner to speak to one of their weekly gatherings. The Brockdorffs were Theosophists. They gave Steiner the first opportunity to realize the decision he came to during the last years of the century, namely to speak openly and directly out of the inner faculties of spiritual perception he had known since childhood and had been quietly nurturing, developing and disciplining ever since.

Quite soon, Steiner was speaking regularly to groups of Theosophists, which upset and bewildered many of his former friends. There was uproar at a lecture on the medieval scholastics which he delivered to the Giordano Bruno Society. The respectable if often radical scholar, historian, scientist, writer and philosopher was emerging as an ‘occultist’. It was truly shocking to many of those around him. Steiner knew he was running risks of isolation. Only in the fringe culture, the Theosophists at first had an ear for what he now wanted to say. Yet he saw around him a culture in decay, and profound crises to come. Much later, he wrote in his autobiography, The Course of My Life: “In the spiritual domain, a new light upon the evolution of humanity was seeking to break through into the knowledge gained during the last third of the nineteenth century. But the spiritual sleep caused by the materialistic interpretation of these acquisitions in knowledge prevented any inkling of this, much less any awareness of it. Thus the very time arrived which ought to have developed in a spiritual direction of its own nature, but which belied its nature the time which began actually to bring about the impossibility of life.”

In 1913 the foundation stone was laid for the first Goetheanum at Dornach in Switzerland. This extraordinary building in wood, with its vast interlocking cupolas, gradually took shape during the years of the First World War, when an international group of volunteers collaborated with local builders and craftsmen to shape the unique carved forms and structures Steiner designed. The building stimulated much innovation in the use of form and colour and is now increasingly recognized as a landmark in twentieth century architecture. Yet Steiner was not concerned to build an impressive monument. He regarded architecture as the servant of human life, and designed the Goetheanum to support the developing work of anthroposophy (Steiner’s preferred term, which he once said should be understood to mean, quite simply, ‘awareness of one ‘5 humanity’) and particularly the work in drama and eurythmy.

As the First World War neared its end, Steiner began to find ways to work more widely and deeply for a renewal of life and culture in many spheres. Europe was in ruins and could have been ready for quite new impulses. Attempts to realize a ‘threefold social order’ as a political and social alternative at that time did not succeed, but the conceptual basis Steiner developed exists as a seed that is even more relevant for today.

Steiner’s social thinking can be adequately grasped only in the context of his view of history, which he saw, in direct contrast to Marx, as shaped fundamentally by inner changes in human consciousness in which higher spiritual beings are actively participating. Just in this century, quite new experiences are awakening in the human soul. (Since Steiner’s time this is a good deal more apparent than it was then.) But we cannot expect to build a healthy social order except on the basis of a true and deep insight not only into the material but also into the soul and spiritual nature and needs of human beings as they are today.

These needs are characterized by a powerful tension between the search for community and the experience of individuality. Community, in the sense of material interdependence, is the basic fact of economic life and of the world economy in which it is embedded today. Yet individuality, in the sense of independence of mind and freedom of speech, is essential to every creative endeavour, to all innovation, and to the realization of the human spirit in the arts and sciences. Without spiritual freedom, our culture will wither and die.

Individuality and community, Steiner urged, can be lifted out of conflict only if they are recognized not as contradictions but as a creative polarity rooted in the essential nature of human beings. Each pole can bear fruit only if it has its appropriate social forms. We need forms that ensure freedom for all expression of spiritual life, and forms that promote brotherhood in economic life. But the health of this polarity depends on a full recognition for a third human need and function, the social relationships between people which concern our feeling for human rights. Here again, Steiner emphasized that we need to develop a distinct realm of social organization to support this sphere, inspired by a concern for equality not equality of spiritual capacity or material circumstance, but that sense of equality that awakens through recognition of the essential spiritual nature of every human being. In this lies the meaning and source of every person’s right also to freedom of spirit and to material sustenance.

The last part of the twentieth century is bringing a growing recognition that we live within a deeper reality we can call spiritual, to which at present we have direct access only through altered conditions of consciousness. We are also learning to see that these realities were known in the past, described in other images and languages, and were the source of all great religious and spiritual teachings. They have been obscured and forgotten for a while as our scientific culture devoted itself to the material world revealed by the senses.

This path led him in his thirties to awaken to an inner recognition of the ‘turning point of time’ in human spiritual history, brought about by the incarnation of the Being we know as the Christ. He saw that the meaning of this event transcends all differentiations of religion, race or nation, and has consequences for all humanity; we are as yet aware only of the beginnings of these. This also led him to know the new presence and working of the Christ, which has begun just in this century, not in the physical world but in the sphere of invisible life-forces of the earth and of mankind.

Steiner was therefore not concerned to bring old teachings in new forms, nor to promulgate doctrines of any kind, but to nurture a path of knowledge in freedom, and of love in action, that can meet the deep and pressing needs of our times. These are the ideals, however imperfectly realized, by which those who find in anthroposophy a continuing inspiration for their lives and work seek to be guided.

A Brief Overview of Geo-Political background of Rudolf Steiner’s Life and Work by Maria Schindler

EUROPE:   A Cosmic Picture  by Maria Schindler  New Knowledge Books, 1975 AUSTRIA             Pages 191-194 Geologically, Austria-Hungary reflected the different periods through which the mineral earth came to its present form– just as the Earth itself is the microcosmic result of all-embracing Divine thoughts.

Into this universal scene, natural and human, where the true self has been striven for, Rudolf Steiner was born on 27 February, 1861. He had a link with each of the most important national groups, Germans, Slavs and Hungarians, for his parents came from the German-speaking Waldviertel, he himself was born in Kraljewic in the southern Slav region and he went to school in Neudoerfl, a Hungarian village near the Lower Austrian frontier. As a young man he studied mathematics, natural science and chemistry at Vienna University and also read works on political and economic theory. Behind the socialist claims he could see only a deliberate blindness to true realities and it seemed to him one of the tragedies of the age that the social question, which is of universal importance, was publicized by men so entirely absorbed in materialism.

From the gallery of the Austrian Parliament building, at the side of his old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schroer, Rudolf Steiner had often followed the passionate political debates in which the characteristics of the different peoples found expression.

Both knew that folk souls stood behind national ties; to Karl Julius Schroer they were ‘ideas’, to Steiner living realities that could not be confined within the political frontiers of the unified state. Spiritual life needed to unfold independently, in harmony with the aims of the folk souls and unfettered by the power of the state. Universal concepts were needed to solve the country’s national, legal and economic problems.

It was while he still lived in Vienna that Steiner prepared his first major work, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.* In it he shows with clear logic that true freedom requires man to purify his motives and instincts. Nature makes of him merely a natural being; society, one whose actions are governed by laws; only by his own effort can he attain to freedom. Yet freedom must be attributed to the human will insofar as it realizes purely ideal intuitions; for these are not eh effects of a necessity imposed from without, but are grounded in themselves. Rudolf Steiner leads man to confidence in his individual path. In Parliament, personality clashed against personality and people against people yet none denied the other’s right to exist. There was then no question of separation, but of finding ways of living together that would be acceptable to all. The Slavs were mainly concerned about political interference in their intellectual life. The Czechs inwardly rebelled against the Germans, who in turn felt threatened by the Czechs, although they shared the memory of a long historical past that had proved fruitful in many ways. The Italian areas also suffered from the control exercised by Vienna over their cultural life. The inhabitants of the south of the Tyrol were only partly German, yet even those whose mother-tongue was Italian felt linked to Central Europe in many respects.

Among the Hungarians, proud and independent as they were, the conflict had begun several decades earlier; the Empire was therefore now officially called Austria-Hungary. What embittered the Hungarians particularly was official intervention in their cultural life. They could not forget that the Austrian government had destroyed their Protestantism. But though they were indignant when Vienna introduced German as the official language in Hungary, they accepted that Austrian officials would find it very difficult to learn Hungarian and that some kind of common language was therefore needed. Their choice fell on Latin. Yet the Hungarians had nothing against the German people or the German spirit: they loved Francis Joseph’s consort, the Empress Elizabeth, whose kind, all-embracing German character belonged also to Hungary, whose debt to the German spirit was considerable. German splinter groups in Transylvania, the Banat and the Danube valley had for centuries nursed the culture they had brought with them as settlers from the region around Lake Constance.

From generation to generation, German Christmas plays had thus been performed in Hungary, and this quiet, unobstrusive activity was a source of strength to the Hungarian people as well. The Germans were a healthy ferment in the realm of culture; in part they became absorbed among the Hungarians.

Although at the end of the nineteenth century, neither Czechs nor Hungarians were thinking of separating from Austria, opposition grew throughout the Austrian provinces against claims to power that made harmonious regional development impossible. It was often said that the time had come for profound changes everywhere; but in Austria the dislike of radical change was stronger than the will for renewal, and the new measures taken proved unwise.

The Austrian problems were problems of humanity. In the summer of 1917 Rudolf Steiner (who was not known in political circles) approached the leading statesmen of Austria with a proposed solution for the complex situation of Central Europe. He realized that economic and cultural life would be more and more hindered in development if they were not separated from the political sphere; and he gave clear warning of the destructive consequences of the prevailing tendencies.

He proposed that the State should hand over the entire economic life to an administration chosen by its own personalities, not by the government, thus allowing it independent mobility, and should renounce control of cultural life. A freedom could then develop in which minorities could feel at home. They would discern new possibilities for the future and hope would be born anew. Only by such action could Central Europe be saved to fulfill its common cultural tasks. Not only the future of Austria was in question, but of the world as a whole. Before the first World War ended, Steiner, then living in Berlin, had worked out directives along which a threefold social system could develop. His Memorandum was submitted to the last Austrian emperor, Charles I; during the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk it was among the papers of the German delegates.

Had a pronouncement in favour of new healing impulses been made from the right place, the effect could have been far-reaching indeed. The peoples of the Russian East could have understood the supplanting of Tsarism by impulses that corresponded with their longing for true brotherhood.

Among the English-speaking peoples were men who could see what was at work in the nations of Central and Eastern Europe; a central-European policy based on insight into the spiritual background of social life would have been intelligible to a western view which reckoned with historical necessities. The American peace programme should have been met by another, issuing from Europe.

The threefold system offered hope of fulfillment to the three ideals of the French Revolution–Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Because man speaks a certain language, goes to school, or represents a point of view, his life extends into the realm of the spirit where Freedom should reign. In living under the protection of the state, like his fellow-men, he partakes of the life of rights, where Equality can rule. As a producer and consumer, he is part of the economic life, which tends towards Brotherhood.

Because of the tripartite nature of human existence, thoughts on these lines are like a rock on which a healthy social order can be based. Rudolf Steiner’s book, The Threefold Commonwealth ,** was in the hands of the delegates at the Versailles conference. In innumerable lectures he had spoken of the need to turn to new impulses, strive for their realization and understand their world-wide significance. He fought for the future of humanity. If insight and the strength to make decisions failed, the whole human race would have to suffer.

But no-one in political circles was sufficiently far-sighted to take up his suggestions and so create the foundations for reconstruction. The rejection of the proposals for a threefold social order determined the later history of the twentieth century.

When efforts to introduce it had failed, Rudolf Steiner said: “ The threefold social order will come. But now it will only materialize after humanity has passed through the greatest catastrophes.” *   Berlin, 1894. English translations, also as The Philosophy of Freedom, 1916 to 1970. ** Rudolf Steiner Press, London SWITZERLAND   Pages 199-201

In this small, rocky country, whose population stands firmly on the ground, Rudolf Steiner spent the last twelve years of his life. During his early years in Austria he had planned, with thoughts of regal power, his book about human freedom. In Germany from 1889 to 1912 he had opened up the sources of the spirit to human striving. In Switzerland, he gave practical indications for a renewal of cultural life. His proposals for the threefold commonwealth date from these years.

From Switzerland he visited other countries. The questions he was asked at that time directly concerned practical life. In co-operation with doctors he evolved the fundamentals of a new art of healing. To orthodox medicine he added a deepened knowledge of the body, soul and spirit, as well as understanding for the healing properties of plants and minerals. When hew was asked about the care of retarded children, he gave answers that inspired a new art of curative education which offers profound understanding of those souls who cannot adjust themselves fully to conditions on Earth in their present lives.

In response to questions from the director of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, who wanted to found a school for the children of his employees, he gave courses for teachers, initiating a new type of education which meets the innermost needs of childhood and adolescence.

Several Protestant clergymen approached Rudolf Steiner with problems of pastoral care and the celebration of the Sacraments today. When a sufficient number of people demanded advice of this kind, Rudolf Steiner gave courses to priests, which led to the foundation of the Christian Community.

Young farmers asked about the application of healing principles to agriculture. In the resulting lectures arranged by a Silesian landowner he gave all the instructions necessary to open up the soil to the forces of the cosmos, thus allowing it to gain new life forces.

He also gave a new impetus to art. For the sculptural treatment of wood and clay he created examples in which the normally invisible movement of the intermediate stages of forms in metamorphosis is made manifest. In painting, he showed how the rhythms of temporal metamorphosis can be re-created and colours adapted to the laws of the rainbow. Architecture also received new impulses through him. Modern buildings whose form is based on the cube are the image of present-day utilitarianism. In future, the more man becomes conscious of the spirit the more this type of architecture will yield to living forms. Rudolf Steiner showed the way to such development.

He also made possible a wider understanding for music whose connection with the world of stars he made evident. His new art of movement, Eurythmy, brings speech and movement, as well as music, into harmony.

In every sphere he led beyond earlier ideals and showed the way towards a healthier development. In particular he appealed to young people for decisions made consciously in the depth of the heart. Through his own life he showed what can be achieved by a human being filled with wisdom. His life was a continually renewed sacrifice to humanity, a ceaseless effort to stretch out a hoping brotherly hand in every situation. Whatever he did he achieved out of love, presence of mind, and fully mastered capacities that were rooted in start wisdom.

On the Eve of New Year, 1922-23, the Goetheanum was deliberately burned down. At midnight the flames pierced the domes and rose like a gigantic torch to the sky. The pillar intended as the representation of wisdom burned on into the morning. Two years and three months after the fire, Rudolf Steiner died.*

He had carved a large statue for the Goetheanum. This escaped the flames, not yet having been moved to its intended position; but it remained unfinished. It shows the

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Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to his life and work by Gary Lachman

John lanigan tunes into rudolf steiner thanks to gary lachman..

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an educationalist whose name is increasingly familiar to parents today. The hundreds of Steiner and Waldorf schools inspired by his ideas are highly regarded for their stress on nurturing the creativity of young children through structured play. Some of the other better-known initiatives arising from Steiner’s work are bio-dynamic agriculture and the Camphill schools and villages for people with special needs. Many parents are vaguely aware that Steiner also had some idiosyncratic notions of a spiritual nature, but relatively few know or care much about them. Any who are curious could do much worse than read Gary Lachman’s excellent new biography.

Steiner was the founder of anthroposophy , which he also called ‘spiritual science’. He was born of Austrian parents of peasant stock in what is now Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He had ‘supersensible perception’ from a tender age. According to Lachman, Steiner related in a 1913 lecture his experience as a young boy of ‘meeting’ a woman who later turned out to have been a close relative and to have committed suicide not long before. The woman asked that the boy help her then, and continue to help her as he grew up. This second-sight was seemingly innate, although Steiner later regarded such phenomena as atavistic, and aimed to find a scientific method for developing and cultivating such powers within ourselves by means of conscious, deliberate thought. This task became his lifework. Steiner lays out very specific meditation exercises in order to ‘know higher worlds,’ and stresses the paramount need for humility and patience.

Steiner thinks that the spiritual world is part of nature, and similarly amenable to scientific investigation. This is an axiom of anthroposophy. Thought is one manifestation of spirit, and thinking is a spiritual activity. Steiner saw consciousness as having undergone evolutionary changes, such that the history of human consciousness is a history of the gradual loss of awareness of a spiritual world, accompanied by a slow development of what we call the ego, until we arrive at the narrowly-focused sharp ‘I-consciousness’ we have today. This loss and development were necessitated by the need for humankind to find its way to the spiritual world freely as independent beings. However, there is no guarantee of success in this quest. The danger is that humanity will fall definitively under the influence of negative powers. To be an ‘I’ carries risks, as well as advantages. To save us from this danger, ‘the Christ-Being’ was incarnated in order to thwart such powers, leaving in his teaching the possibility for us to pursue our true evolutionary path.

Anthroposophy envisages coming epochs as constituting a rapprochement between humanity and the spiritual world, but on the basis of our free choice as bearers of an I-consciousness which should undergo further evolutionary developments. This shows that Steiner’s system parallels the Christian doctrine of the Fall and redemption, but from a vast, esoteric, syncretic and cosmic perspective. Many of the concepts of anthroposophy are also shared with mainstream theosophy, while karma and reincarnation play central roles.

Steiner also developed a social philosophy, which centres on the idea of ‘three-foldness’: he says that the human soul consists of thinking, feeling, and willing, and that this is reflected in the activities of the head, the nervous-circulatory system, and the metabolic-limb system of the physical organism. Consequently only a social order which reflects this physical and spiritual three-foldness will serve humankind aright. In society, the ‘head’ is the sphere of culture and creativity, where the freedom of the individual is paramount; the circulatory system is the political sphere, where recognition of everyone’s rights is paramount; and the metabolic system is the economic sphere, where production of wealth is carried on – though for the common good, not for individual gain.

Lachman takes us through Steiner’s childhood and youth (references to “the young, dreamy boy” are perhaps a touch ‘biographese’, and there is a certain speculative tone in this section, perhaps inevitably given the lack of sources). Steiner’s education was of a scientific and technical stamp. When he was 16 the family moved near Vienna, and later Steiner participated in the city’s flourishing café society. This was the Vienna of composers Schoenberg and Webern. Steiner’s philosophy develops across periods which see him as ‘rustic scholar’; as student and editor of Goethe’s scientific works; in his discovery of himself as a born teacher and lecturer in the mainstream theosophical movement; and his break with that movement, which ushers in his full maturation as the exponent of anthroposophy and the consolidation and elaboration of the system through a vast number of public lectures delivered across Europe. On the ground, this development goes in tandem with moves from Vienna on to Weimar, Berlin and finally Switzerland.

Even for those who have some prior acquaintance with Steiner, several things we learn from Lachman may come as surprises. At variance with the impression produced by the best-known photograph (reproduced on the jacket), showing a gaunt face, sunken eyes and a piercing gaze, Steiner was a social being, and inspired love in many who knew him. He struck some though as a rather lonely and solitary figure, and he had known life in cheap furnished rooms. Steiner gave up this “miserable existence” to live with surrogate families until he was married. He eventually became a little hard-of-hearing. In many ways he was quite ordinary: like most people, Steiner had to earn a living, and he was no stranger to stultifying compromise. What may be the biggest revelation to relative outsiders is the extent of his political involvement in the affairs of the day, especially on the eve of WW1 and during its aftermath. Lachman portrays Steiner as a household-name in the German-speaking world, and internationally so in his later years. He was sought for consultation by the wife of von Moltke, commander-in-chief of German forces, before the outbreak of war. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to gain popular support for implementation of his three-fold social order in Silesia in 1921, as the region approached a referendum on whether to be part of Germany or Poland. Here, his ideas were seen by the left as potentially diverting the working classes from the core class struggle. And during the early years of the Weimar Republic, Steiner narrowly escaped assassination when a lecture he was giving was disrupted by Nazis.

Lachman’s final pages deal with the founding of the ‘Goetheanum’, an international focal point for anthroposophical activities at Dornach in Switzerland, and a drawing of conclusions on a more personal note by the biographer.

A satisfying amount of space is devoted to anthroposophy, showing us Steiner’s debt to Goethe and a certain lineage between anthroposophy and German Idealism and Romanticism. Steiner’s early rejection of a Kantian model of cognition as too limited would seem to go hand-in-hand with such an ancestry. This critique constitutes a kind of foundation for anthroposophy in conventional philosophical terms.

Lachman outlines some of anthroposophy’s main content, taking in some of the more exotic parts, such as the life between death and re-birth, ‘reading to the dead’, and the ‘occult history of the world’. In the Lemurian epoch of this history, human beings had telepathy; then there was the corruption of the ‘Atlantis’ civilisation which led to its destruction. Lachman addresses the fact that many people, having the impression that at least some of anthroposophy is the stuff of the scandal-sheet expos és of spiritualism, would not entertain it seriously for a moment. He confesses his own dubiety on these counts, but is led finally to keep the jury out on the seemingly more extravagant claims. As for Steiner himself, as he always declined to say how he knew about such things, we might most benignly conclude that he learned them from his natural gifts and from practicing his own meditation exercises.

Lachman is the author of several works on spiritual themes, and, incidentally, a former member of and song writer for 80s pop group Blondie. What then is Lachman’s considered view of Steiner? He describes himself as a sympathetic outsider, ultimately preferring the early, more orthodox epistemological works, where Steiner propounds, in Lachman’s phrase, a ‘participatory epistemology’. Here our inner world has the power to grasp its experiences in the same way that we can grasp tables and chairs. Consciousness is interactive, rather than being a passive mirror of the outside world. The biographer describes from his own personal experience how once, when looking at a rose, he had the sensation that his consciousness, no longer merely reflecting it, ‘cradled’ the rose.

This eminently fair, balanced and enlightening biography probably marks a further step in a process of increasing awareness of Steiner, brought about largely by the growth of Waldorf education. Given that much biographical writing on Steiner has been the work of anthroposophists, Lachman’s introduction probably represents a partial ‘secularisation’ of anthroposophy, in that he writes as an outsider. Colin Wilson has been described as “unable to enter into the true meaning of the work” for his sympathetic though critical writing on Steiner. It would be interesting to know how the same commentators might react to Lachman, with his cautious open-mindedness.

The signal service this biography renders is to place Steiner in a broader philosophical, historical, social and cultural context than it has until now been possible to see him in, thus satisfying a long-felt need to ground Steiner more recognisably in his times.

© John Lanigan 2008

John Lanigan is to philosophy what Jack Kerouac is to jazz. He communicated this article to our computer telepathically from Lemuria.

• Gary Lachman, Rudolf Steiner , Penguin, 2007, 278pp, $16.95 (pbk), ISBN-13: 9781585425433.

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• World Biography
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Rudolf Steiner Biography

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Austrian philosopher and educational reformer Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) remains perhaps best known for the educational methods he pioneered in his Waldorf schools, which have spread slowly but steadily around the world since his death.

The philosophy underlying those schools grew out of a lifetime of innovative thinking that encompassed fields as diverse as traditional philosophy, spiritualism, color theory, art, agriculture, medicine, music, and architecture. A trained philosopher and at the same time a mystic, Steiner believed that spiritual insights could be gained through systematic thought. He founded the spiritual belief system called Anthroposophy, an offshoot of Theosophy, and disseminated his ideas through an energetic campaign that included years of lectures and a group of writings that ran to some 350 volumes when collected. Influential in the worlds of education, occult studies, organic farming, and even interior design (he was fascinated by color and its relationship to personality), Steiner remains an imperfectly understood and often controversial figure.

Moved Often During Childhood

Rudolf Steiner was born February 27, 1861, in Donji Kraljevec (Lower Kraljevec), a town that was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (it is now in northern Croatia). His father was a telegraph operator who worked for the Southern Austria railway. Steiner's childhood, noted Gary Lachman of the Fortean Times , "had an equal measure of both natural beauty and modern technology"—the Kraljevec area boasted gorgeous Alpine scenery, and the railroad and the telegraph were both new technologies in the 1860s. Steiner's railroad company family moved several times, however, and he spent time in Neudörfl in southern Austria and then attended high school in Wiener-Neustadt near Vienna. An introverted youngster, Steiner enjoyed mathematics and later spoke of several episodes in which he seemed to display unusual psychic abilities.

Steiner's family was not wealthy, and as he continued his schooling he often made ends meet as a private tutor (sometimes to his own classmates) of mathematics and science. In 1879 Steiner enrolled at the Technische Hochschule (Technical University) of Vienna, taking math and science classes but also immersing himself in German philosophy and literature. The writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) made an immediate and lifelong impression on Steiner when he was an undergraduate student. Goethe, though best known outside German-speaking countries for his play Faust , was a prolific writer on science and metaphysics who attempted to construct an overarching, holistic philosophy of human perception and belief. Another influence on the young Steiner was a man named Felix Koguzki who gathered and sold herbs for a living but also had a rich life of spiritual and mystical experiences.

One of Steiner's professors noted his enthusiasm for Goethe and his systematic mind, and recommended him for a position as editor of a series of Goethe's scientific writings for a scholarly Deutsche National Literatur (German National Literature) publication project. He began work even before his graduation in 1883. For much of the first part of his life, Steiner made a living as an editor and archivist, working on a complete edition of Goethe's writings in the 1880s and moving to Weimar in eastern Germany in 1890 to take a position at the Schiller-Goethe Archives there. On the side, Steiner took more classes and received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rostock in 1891. His dissertation was published as a book, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft (Truth and Science).

During this part of his life Steiner was primarily a philosopher, and one who espoused the concept of idealism—the belief that experience is located in the mind—rather than materialism, which holds that the world, including mental processes, is ultimately reducible to matter and its interactions. Philosophie der Freiheit (Philosophy of Freedom, 1894) was his most important work of these years. Steiner studied the tradition of nineteenth-century German philosophy going back to Hegel and to the radical idealism of Johann Fichte. He continued to make a living as an editor of several different magazines, moving to the German capital of Berlin in 1897. In one article in the Magazine for Literature , Steiner rejected anti-semitic ideas. His positions on the relationship of Germanic peoples to those of other cultures would later prove controversial, however. Steiner married Anna Eunike in 1899, but the marriage later ended in divorce.

Taught at Workers' School

Gradually, Steiner's interests broadened beyond philosophy (and if they had not, his name would likely be little known today). He began teaching two evenings a week at the Arbeiterbildungsschule (School for the Education of Workers) in Berlin, a progressive institution where he could discuss ideas of universal education and freedom as they related to the working class. Steiner also joined the Berlin Theosophic Society, a branch of the international theosophy movement. Theosophists held that existing religions were paths, often equally valid, to a higher spiritual truth. By 1902 Steiner had given numerous lectures on theosophy and became the German Theosophic Society's general secretary. To describe his system of "spiritual science," he began to use the word "anthroposophy," derived from Greek roots meaning human wisdom. Among the many books Steiner devoted to Anthroposophy were Outline of Occult Science (1909) and Outline of Esoteric Science (1910).

It was clear that Steiner had found his calling. He became what would now be called a full-time motivational speaker for the last quarter-century of his life, giving some 6,000 lectures that ranged over numerous topics related to the nature of human spiritual life. Steiner lectured on Christian themes, on history, drama, science, agriculture, and virtually any other area of human endeavor that he saw as related to the spiritual quest. He saw the human being as consisting of body, soul, and an eternal spirit that manifested itself anew—he believed in reincarnation. Among the spiritual beings who oversaw human development were the Archangel Michael and a negative Antichrist-like figure he called Ahriman, who sought to prevent human spiritual evolution. One of his favorite themes was that of the Threefold Social Order (or Social Threefolding—the German term is Soziale Dreigliederung : he advocated the separation in human society of the cultural (including educational), political, and economic realms. After his first marriage dissolved, he met anthroposophy devotee Marie von Sivers, an actress from the Baltic region, and the two were married in 1914.

It was around that time that Steiner's relationship with Theosophy dissolved. It had been under strain for some time due to religious disagreements. Steiner remained a Christian, but avoided affiliation with either Catholicism or Protestantism and instead forged his own mystical version of the Christian religion, shaped partly by the beliefs of the Rosicrucian Order. In the early 1910s English-born Theosophy society head Annie Besant, who lived in India, had contended that Jiddu Krishnamurti, a spiritually gifted boy she encountered on a beach, was the Second Coming of Christ. Steiner rejected the idea and led 55 of 65 German chapters of the theosophical movement in a breakaway plan to form a new Anthroposophical Society. The new group grew rapidly under Steiner's charismatic leadership, and Steiner began work on designing a temple-like headquarters building called the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Even during World War I, workers from around Europe, including citizens of warring countries, cooperated without incident in its construction.

Steiner argued that World War I showed the need for a new social order that entailed peaceful methods of conflict resolution. In 1919 he explored these themes in a lecture he gave to workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany. After Steiner's speech, factory owner Emil Molt suggested that he set up a school for children of the factory workers, modeled on the ideas he had expressed. Steiner agreed, and the result was the first Waldorf school, named for the factory itself. He stipulated that the school should be run cooperatively by its teachers, and Waldorf schools since that time have all featured cooperative management schemes. Despite his considerable fame, Steiner shunned personal adulation and once remarked that if he could have changed the name of Anthroposophy to something new every day, he would have done so in order to emphasize the need for his followers to think for themselves.

Favored Natural Farming Methods

The Waldorf schools were not Steiner's only forward-looking innovation. He also anticipated the growth of organic farming in his opposition to chemical fertilizers. In Steiner's view, a farm should be a self-contained ecological entity. He devised a unique compost recipe that included a stag's bladder; a cow's gut; the head of a cow, goat, sheep, or pig, filled with oak bark; stinging nettles wrapped in peat moss; a cow's intestine filled with chamomile flowers; and crushed valerian flowers. As with others among Steiner's ideas, his followers have discarded some of the more exotic specifics in his writings while maintaining the general ideas. Most controversial among his writings were his racial theories, which assigned specific traits to individual races. In Germany especially, Steiner's devotees came under attack as a result of this aspect of his philosophy.

In the early 1920s Steiner began to encounter heavy criticism. Some of it came from members of the Nazi party angered because Steiner backed independence for the con- tested German province of Upper Silesia (now part of Poland). But Steiner was also attacked by the Catholic and Protestant churches, Marxists, and rival spiritual leaders. On December 31, 1922, the Goetheanum burned to the ground shortly after its completion. The Nazis were generally blamed for the fire, although its cause remained uncertain. Steiner announced plans for a second Goetheanum, built of concrete; it still stands in Switzerland, and both buildings are considered architectural landmarks of the twentieth century.

The attacks, including one in an article by Adolf Hitler himself, took their toll on Steiner, who redoubled his lecture schedule even as he fell into poor health. Toward the end of his life he emphasized his natural farming methods and a new anthroposophic system of medicine that he developed, and in which he began to train physicians. In the fall of 1924 he had to give up his speaking activities due to illness. Steiner suffered from an unknown stomach ailment, and some rumors spread among his followers that he had been poisoned. Steiner, however, discouraged such speculation before his death in Dornach on March 30, 1925.

The Waldorf concept grew slowly as Anthroposophy devotees set up new institutions. By 1939 there were schools in Switzerland, England, Hungary, Norway, and the United States, in addition to seven in Germany. The German schools were shuttered by the National Socialist government but reopened after World War II, at which time Waldorf education began a steady spread around the world. By the year 2000 more than 700 Waldorf schools worldwide featured classrooms painted in the colors Steiner had specified as appropriate for each stage of human development, and focused on learning through direct experience of materials (reading was often delayed until the third or fourth grade), engaging in the structured system of exercise and dance Steiner called Eurythmy, and reciting Steiner's poems about the natural world. Public schools in the United States and Britain were impressed by data showing Waldorf education's ability to reach students who had previously proven disruptive in conventional classroom settings. A large network of educational institutions around the world devoted itself to training Waldorf teachers and to the study of other aspects of Anthroposophy and of Steiner's thought.

Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology , 5th ed., Gale Group, 2001.

Hemleben, Johannes, and Leo Twyman, Rudolf Steiner: An Illustrated Biography , Rudolf Steiner Press, 2001.

McDermott, Robert, The Essential Steiner , Harper Press, 1984.

Religious Leaders of America , 2nd ed., Gale Group, 1999.

Tummer, Lia, and Horacio Lato, Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy for Beginners , Writers & Readers Publishing, 2001.

Periodicals

Atlantic Monthly , September 1999.

Independent (London, England), November 1, 1997; January 24, 2007.

Instructor , November 1999.

"Rudolf Steiner: Chronological Biography," http://www.sab.org/br/steiner/biogr-eng.htm (February 3, 2007).

"Rudolf Steiner: Dweller on the Threshold," Fortean Times , http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/205_steiner1.html (February 3, 2007).

"Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925)," Skylark Books, http://www.skylarkbooks.co.uk/Rudolf-Steiner-Biography.htm (February 3, 2007).

Steiner, Rudolf, The Story of My Life , Rudolf Steiner Archive, http://www.wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA028/TsoML/GA028_index.html (January 3, 2007).

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Rudolf Steiner

A biography.

• Publisher SteinerBooks
• Published 5th September 2017
• ISBN 9781621482062
• Pages 816 pp.
• Size 7" x 10"
• Images 125 b/w
• Description
• Table of Contents

“I do not want to be revered! I want to be understood.” — Rudolf Steiner (1915)

This is the most comprehensive biography of Rudolf Steiner available, tracing his life and development through an in-depth look at his life and work, which encompassed numerous areas, including his Goethean research, philosophy, esoteric work, pedagogy, medicine, sociology, agriculture, architecture, painting, movement arts, and poetry. This biography, which tracks his divergent activities, shows how Rudolf Steiner was most concerned with bringing a new approach to knowledge through Spiritual Science and to revitalizing the most important areas of human culture and society.

During the late 1890s, a student of Rudolf Steiner observed:

“I never again had a teacher like him. He was gaunt, shabbily dressed. He always wore an old coat; his trousers looked like corkscrews, much too short and worn out. At first he sported a van Dyke, then a mustache, then he was clean shaven.... Everyone loved him dearly, and I would have, as would most of the others, gone through fire for him.... He was loving and concerned in a way that I have never again discovered in another person. Funny—I often asked my fiancée whether he was really as poor as he seemed to be; during breaks he always took a dry roll out of his pocket and ate it with visible enjoyment. But if you think that they left him in peace during the break, you are way off base. The whole group gathered around him and the questions were endless.”

This volume is a translation of Rudolf Steiner—eine Biographie, 2 vols., Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart (1997).

C O N T E N T S:

Foreword Introduction

1. The Stranger 2. Learning 3. Student in Vienna 4. The Lonely Wanderer 5. Goethe: A Source of Hope 6. In Need of Special Care 7. Theory of Knowledge 8. Social Life in Vienna 9. The Editor: An Excursion into Politics 10. Aesthetics 11. First Journeys 12. Friedrich Eckstein, Theosophy, and Rosa Mayreder 13. Spirit and Nature: The Foundation of a Spiritual Philosophy 14. Weimar: At the Goethe-Schiller Archive 15. Lonely in the Company of Many Friends

Images, Part One

16. The Philosophy of Freedom 17. For and against Nietzsche 18. A New World Opens Up 19. The Maelstrom of Berlin 20. Time of Trial 21. Three Attempts at the Turn of the Century 22. The Way into the Theosophical Society 23. The Theosophical Society 24. Establishing the German Section of the Theosophical Society 25. Attempts to Fructify the Art of Living 26. The Three Paths 27. The Munich Congress: A Conference in a Rosicrucian Temple 28. Breadth and Depth 29. The Illumination of the Christian Mysteries 30. The Mystery Plays 31. Separation from the Theosophical Society 32. Surrounded by Artists: 1907–1918 373 33. Building

Images, Part Two

34. Wartime in Dornach 35. The Destiny of Central Europe 36. The Idea of the Threefold Human Organism 37. The Threefold Social Movement during the War 38. Preparations for the Postwar Period 39. Struggle for the Threefold Commonwealth 40. The Independent Waldorf School 41. Commercial Ventures 42. The Need to Communicate Impulses for Cultural Renewal 43. A Broader Understanding of Healing 44. Establishing The Christian Community 45. Possibilities—Realities 46. The Goetheanum Fire 47. Stuttgart 1923 48. Spring 1923: the Struggle to Rebuild 49. Summer 1923: England

Images, Part Three

50. Autumn 1923: The Way to Decision 51. The Christmas Conference of 1923 52. Foundations 53. Spring 1924 54. The last intensification—Summer 1924 55. Sickbed and Death

Epilogue The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner Bibliography

Christoph Lindenberg

Christoph Lindenberg  (1930–1999) completed an internship in an institution for juvenile delinquents. He studied history and English philology, as well as philosophy and education in Göttingen and Freiburg before attending the Waldorf teacher training seminar. In 1955, he worked as a teacher at the Free Georgenschule  in Reutlingen, and from 1960 at the Tübingen Free Waldorf School , where he taught history, English, art, and social studies. From 1967 to 1970 Lindenberg was an assistant at the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Tübingen. Since 1980 he has worked as a freelance lecturer and writer. He lived near Freiburg. Lindenberg was a member of the board of directors of the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools and a permanent member of the anthroposophical monthly magazine Die Drei . He wrote two different biographies of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy.

READ THE AUTHOR'S FOREWORD AND INTRODUCTION

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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

The Rudolf Steiner Archive is the largest digital library of the works of Rudolf Steiner available in English. With over 145,000 unique visitors each month, the site serves a vast community of Anthroposophists and researchers throughout the world.

The Archive is a project of the US-based not-for-profit charity, Steiner Online Library (SOL). As an IRS 501c3 tax-exempt organization, donations are tax deductible in the United States, US Federal Tax ID 85-2621701.

Our Mission

Our mission is to increase public awareness of Anthroposophy, a philosophy created by the 20th-century polymath Rudolf Steiner, and foster research in that regard. Per this mission, SOL maintains the Rudolf Steiner Archive, a library of the works of Rudolf Steiner in English, and offers digital versions of the texts to the public online for research and educational purposes. SOL will also continue to translate the original German text of Steiner’s work into English and include such new translations in the library.

Dr. Christopher Wietrzykowski Co-Founder, Executive Director and President

Dr. Christopher Wietrzykowski has had an intense interest in Rudolf Steiner since reading How to Know Higher Worlds in 2003. He soon became a vital contributor to the Rudolf Steiner Archive, personally digitizing and editing approximately one-third of the materials in the Archive. In 2012, the original founder of the Rudolf Steiner Archive asked Chris to take over the site in the future and announced the arrangement to the Anthroposophical community. Dr. Wietrzykowski set aside his dentistry career in 2020 and, building upon his prior knowledge of computing, he taught himself several programming languages, website design, search engine development, and system administration.

Karin Wietrzykowski, Esq. Co-Founder, Director of Operations, Secretary and Treasurer

Karin Wietrzykowski is an accomplished attorney, focusing on technology transactions. Having served as General Counsel to a consortium of digital content producers, technology companies, and digital media retailers, she is well-versed in corporate law, IP protection, and other legal issues pertaining to digital media. Karin has also worked with several nonprofit organizations. She first encountered the works of Rudolf Steiner in the early 2000s as a natural progression to her long-time interest in metaphysics. Her interest in Spiritual Science has grown exponentially since then and she now has dedicated her career to Anthroposophy and the Rudolf Steiner Archive together with her husband Christopher.

The problem we aim to solve

The advent of the technological revolution has caused mankind to fall into a deep materialism. Much of our former cultural life has been stripped away and is now supplied for us through television and computerized devices. We no longer ask ourselves important life questions but instead seek authoritative answers from political leaders and scientific "experts". The cost we pay is a loss of our spiritual freedom. Instead of following our own unique path we are coerced to follow one that has been set for us.

Rudolf Steiner foresaw all these things in the early 20th century. His philosophy, Anthroposophy, provides a pathway back to a world that includes spirit. It explains how our material world is interwoven with an objectively real spiritual world that we can come to know through study and meditation. It explains the inner workings of reincarnation and karma. In whole, it provides a way for people to come to an understanding of their true place in relation to the world.

The solution: "Man, know thyself!"

Steiner Online Library aims to preserve the vast wealth of information contained in the books, articles and transcribed lectures given to the world through the personality of Rudolf Steiner.

A distinct summary of Steiner's message could be summed up by the Ancient Greek aphorism "Man, know thyself!" By studying his teaching, we begin to truly understand our whole being and its purpose in the world. SOL presents this information in a free and easily searchable format to English speakers throughout the world to enable them to carry out this task of self-knowledge.

Thus, through this endeavor to know ourselves we come to better understand the world around us and our unique place in it. We become no longer merely cogs in a wheel but rather a wonderful synergy of individual, free beings working together as a unity.

The History of this Initiative

Since its creation in 1978, the online web-based Rudolf Steiner Archive has been used by Anthroposophists and others around the world for personal and professional research. In 2021, the US-based organisation behind the Archive, The e.Lib. Inc., transferred the Rudolf Steiner Archive website of RSArchive.org and related technology, books, and materials to a new non-profit organisation, Steiner Online Library. What follows is a brief history of this whole development. [Read More]

© 2021-2024 Steiner Online Library dba Rudolf Steiner Archive. All rights reserved.

This material is made available through the Rudolf Steiner Archive, rsarchive.org , a project of the community funded nonprofit, Steiner Online Library. Please consider making a tax deductible donation to support our work.

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Rudolf Steiner: A Biography Hardcover – January 1, 2012

• Print length 793 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Rudolf Steiner Pr
• Publication date January 1, 2012
• Dimensions 7.5 x 2.25 x 10 inches
• ISBN-10 1621480151
• ISBN-13 978-1621480150
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rudolf Steiner Pr; Special Edition (January 1, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 793 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1621480151
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1621480150
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.7 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 2.25 x 10 inches
• #31,070 in Religious Leader Biographies

About the author

Christoph lindenberg.

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The Astronomicon

Biography Work According to Anthroposophy

Recently, I’ve come across a very interesting book:  The Human Life by George O’Neil and Florin Lowndes . This is a book about biography work , a discipline well known among anthroposophers (Giorgio if you are reading this, thanks for the advice!).

For those who never heard about Anthroposophy, it is a conception of the world founded by the Austrian philosopher, social reformer and esotericist Rudolf Steiner. I don’t want to go into that because it’s a huge topic and this post would probably turn into an article about it. In fact Anthroposophy is the mother of Waldorf Education, Biodynamic Agriculture and the Camphill Movement (just to name a few). So if you are interested you can start from here .

Biography Work

In a nutshell, Biography Work is the dynamic understanding of the human life. It is a way of looking at your biography as a piece of artwork you consciously contribute to create. And I say contribute because your life is driven by its own laws. We can’t ignore them; we need to learn the way to listen to them and understand them. In other words, it’s never a creation from scratch. You can’t pretend to be someone you’re not . But you can definitely be an active part in order to live a meaningful life . That’s the goal of Biography Work.

The book comes with a beautiful chart (it’s a poster by the way). It pictures the archetype of a human life divided in septennia (the rainbows below) in a way that they can also mirror each other.

The colors help to catch easily the relationship between events and experiences that we wouldn’t connect otherwise. Those correspondences are based on spiritual laws of rhythm and reflection discovered by Rudolf Steiner. You can think of it as a spiritual “breathing”: outer events and inner processing create together the game of life.

This chart is a potent, living symbol we can work with. Check it out, it’s stunning.

Planetary Spheres

As an astrologer I was at first interested in the correspondences between planets and septennia. From an astrological perspective they are indeed pretty obvious.

The chart starts at the top left corner with the Moon (0-7 years), and proceeds down through the spheres of Mercury (7-14 years) and Venus (14-21 years). This top-down representation means that as you grow your spirit gradually incarnate from the spiritual realms down to earth. This process ends with the formation of what Anthroposophy regards as the “body” . Please note I am simplyfing a lot, since Anthroposophy talks about a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body.

Then, the central part of the incarnation takes place. From 21 to 42 you are under the influence of the Solar Sphere . Here you go through a long threefold phase (3 septennia) of exploration and learning. If everything goes well, that should lead you eventually to understand who you really are. The central part of the incarnation is about the Soul : the second component of the human being.

Finally, the real spiritual journey begins (yes, at 42!). Now you know where you come from and who you really are. You have everything you need to do what you came down on earth for. It’s time for action, the influence of Mars kiks in (42-49 years). This is also called the “second adolescence” and it is a reflection of the experiences that took place on the Sphere of Venus (14-21).

You are now going upwards, ascending the ladder of wisdom. The Sphere of Jupiter (49-56) makes you a mature person, in the same way the Sphere of Mercury (7-14) gave you juvenile vitality and curiosity. At last, those vital forces begin to retreat as the influence of Saturn (56-63) grows stronger. These three septennia refers to the development of what Anthroposophy calls the Spirit .

In conclusion

The journey, of course, proceeds. But you are now a “child of the gods”: you are free from the influence of the planetary spheres. Or at least from the classic septenary, since the correspondences continue with the generational planets ( Uranus , Neptune and Pluto ). Your life is now one with the life of others.

This article was just an introduction to a very complex subject. If you are not familiar with Anthroposophy the book itself is nevertheless an excellent compendium. If you want to deepen the threefold nature of the human being according to Anthroposophy I highly suggested the book Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner (you can find it here for free ).

I consider myself a free researcher in western spiritual disciplines, in particular Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy and the Neoplatonic Hermetic tradition. I have a three-year training in Astrology at the CIDA delegation of Trieste, the Italian Center for Astrological Disciplines. I graduated in Computer Engineering from the University of Trieste.

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How can I obtain a copy of the chart and instruction book?

Sure, you can find it on Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.com/Human-Life-George-ONeil/dp/092997901X/ref=mp_s_a_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532640811&sr=8-1-spell&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+human+lofe+o’neil

The book comes with the poster

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Mercury Press

About Series

Mercury Press , an initiative of the Rudolf Steiner Fellowship Community in Spring Valley, New York, published interesting, unique, and useful books and pamphlets for more than fifty years, including resources for teachers, children’s books, books on anthroposophic medicine, original translations of Rudolf Steiner's works, biographies, and much more. Titles published by Mercury are now available through SteinerBooks.

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The Human Life

Understanding your biography.

• Publisher Mercury Press
• Published 1st June 2012
• ISBN 9781957569192
• Language English
• Pages 354 pp.
• Size 6" x 9"
• Description

The Human Life is a contribution to biography work that explores the various chapters of a human lifetime in the context of an anthroposophic worldview. Cosmic evolution, destiny, and karma are discussed as they relate to one’s life and to the lives of others. This book is a helpful guide as we travel the path toward self-knowledge and try to understand encounters that can trip us up along the way.

A Life-chart Poster is available for separate purchase. It helps us see aspects of our physical, life, soul, and "I," as well as patterns that show themselves in our present incarnation.

The Human Life has been described as an accessible introduction to Anthroposophy.

George and Gisela O'Neil

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Holistic Biography Work reflects on individual biographies or life stories against the backdrop of the archetypal developmental journey of humanity.

Looking at one’s life story in a creative and systematic way may be done individually, with a group of trusted companions or in therapeutic settings. This provides valuable insights into the themes, changes and turning points in one’s life. Strengthening and deepening self-knowledge, it offers keys for future change and growth.

Holistic Biography Work is beneficial for personal and professional development. Participating therapists, teachers, facilitators and consultants have found that seeing everyday experiences embedded in a full Life Story and in context with the theory provided in our Courses, results in a deeper understanding of phases and layers in life and opens new perspectives and approaches in work.

Holistic Biography Work is therefore a useful tool within careers counselling, coaching, couples counselling, family therapy, curative work; and in consultancy work with groups or organisations. The development of groups and organisations, with some adjustments, follows similar patterns and phases to those of individual development.

Holistic Biography Work provides a healing and curative approach because it helps us to view life in a clearer and more conscious way. It helps us to develop self-acceptance, it invites us to take new directions, to reinvent our goals and to create meaning. It can be part of individual biographical Consultancy, Counselling, Art therapy or Psychotherapy. It aims to work, at a soul level, towards the integration of difficult and unique life experiences. Alongside archetypal, general laws there are individual laws and patterns resulting from one’s destiny, which can be explored as individual work or in one-to-one sessions.

Training Goals

The Holistic Biography Work Online Training Program aims to prepare Biography Consultants who can accompany others in challenging or decisive moments of their lives.

Biography Work is a preventative or salutogenic process. It is not a therapeutic modality or therapy substitute, but provides a method of clarification that is often experienced as helpful, with therapeutic side-effects. We can become more whole, more integrated, after falling apart and can come to better terms with ourselves and the world. We are heard and seen and gain a helpful perspective through this process.

In individual or group work, the experiences of the past, the current life situation and future development opportunities are systematically examined and mapped, in order to develop steps and goals for the future. Various perspectives and themes are used throughout the training process.

We use a phenomenological approach that incorporates questioning and self-reflection. The systematic stock-taking of the different aspects of our life contributes to an individual search for meaning. It is also helpful in considering vocational choices, partnership dilemmas, life challenges, destiny moments or coming to terms with ill-health. A Life Panorama Chart provides a condensed life overview and enables an objective overview to be undertaken.

The methods of biography work can be applied in the field of human resources in organisations, or for the systematic development of a corporate biography and identity.

The methods of biography work that we teach in our courses are derived from two main sources:

• The systematic, phenomenological and comparative exploration of human biographies by various researchers; and
• the study of the human being based on psychological studies and a spiritual perspective, such as that offered by Anthroposophy.

Together they give rise to generalisable biographical laws, e.g. about life-phases, phases in the development of consciousness, typical developmental crises, rhythms and turning points in human biographies.

Participants of our Holistic Biography Work OnlineTraining Program examine their life experiences through different lenses, over a period of 3 or so years, and deepen their understanding of the human life journey. They learn to become helpful companions for others facing questions or challenges. After successful completion of the training, they may become accredited Biography Consultants.

Spiritual perspective

The underlying philosophy of Holistic Biography Work is based on the pioneering work of Rudolf Steiner, Bernard Lievegoed, Gudrun Burkhard and Coenraad van Houten. Guided by Lievegoed’s words ‘Let’s make Anthroposophy – the wisdom of the human being – operational’, we have striven to make our work accessible and useful.

Both Burkhard and van Houten were teachers of and then colleagues with, Karl-Heinz Finke and their work has informed our work. Anthroposophy and other Philosophies, as well as research within education and psychology, has been viewed through a spiritual lens. We think of it as a practical form of psychology, that acknowledges the soul and spirit of the human being, as well as recognising the wondrous form and energy of the physical body that makes our life on earth possible.

We have developed and use resources that examine our lives in detail, using the 7-year life phases suggested by Steiner and other researchers. In each phase, we develop a new capacity that enables us to understand more of the world and ourselves. Along the human life journey, we face developmental tasks, and explore our life themes and life patterns and questions. We come to see our life as a journey of initiation – the trials and challenges that we face develop our potential and capacity to understand ourselves and contribute our unique gifts to the world. We grow closer toward our true individuality, and have the opportunity to take hold of our lives with greater awareness of spiritual realities. We become aware, as Steiner writes, that: My soul and the great world are one.

Training – Methodology

(Content is based on an article by Gudrun Burkhard in her book Biographical Work. )

The method of Holistic Biography Work is based on Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. In his research of Spiritual Science, Steiner describes, enhances and applies Phenomenology .

The phenomenological approach, as developed by Steiner in the footsteps of Goethe , is used in biographical work when we observe the events in a life. In order to benefit fully from the Goethean practice of observation, one needs to practise observation of oneself, as Steiner indicated in some of the lectures quoted here.

What is the purpose of this observational practice? Firstly, Steiner described imaginative cognition , where one sees a single event, a seven-year period, or one’s whole life, in a panoramic view through images, forms or colours. This view, described by Steiner as the Panorama of life , is similar to the one we have after death. Some people experience such a panoramic view when they suffer shock or an accident, in which their etheric body detaches from their physical body. Often after such an event, this person’s life will change, with the urge to take new directions. The panoramic view gained through biographical work is the first step for a person to make changes, such as redirecting their activities and setting different goals in life.

The second step relates to inspired cognition , which one obtains following the observation of the phenomena. It entails erasing the actual image that one has created, clearing one’s mind and awakening to what arises, in terms of the sounds, music, harmony and disharmony of each seven-year period. We are invited to look at what we have done so far, who we have met and what was our influence on them and theirs on us.

If we extrapolate this idea to life after death , we would be reviewing life – as we do in kamaloka – and as we do when we pass through the various planetary spheres. We would be working on our previous life and preparing for the next life at the same time.

In the field of spiritual forces, there are laws as precise as those of the physical world (such as in physics, chemistry and mathematics).

Thirdly, a spiritual researcher or an initiate such as Rudolf Steiner, besides entering into imaginative and inspired cognition also gets in touch with intuitive cognition in order to encompass all the laws relating to the evolution of the earth, cosmos, human being and spiritual beings. These spiritual laws are reflected in our biography through rhythms, mirroring or synchronicity and metamorphosis .

These laws are introduced and described in the workshops and trainings of Holistic Biography Work . The study of the laws of a biography is as deeply therapeutic as is the study of mathematics to a mind that is confused or unable to concentrate. In summary, the acquisition of a panoramic view is the first step in working with our biography. The second step is made through an understanding of how life after death is reflected in our biography, or in other words, the influence of destiny and karma . The third step is achieved through a deeper understanding of the spiritual laws which govern biography and of the ways in which certain life phases transform or reflect others, or synchronicity (acausal ordered-ness).

Life is itself a path of initiation which becomes more meaningful when it is lived in full consciousness, in a way that can be achieved through working on one’s biography.