Presented by DANIEL PINCHBECK.  Recorded January 17, 2021

Far in advance of his own time, Rudolf Steiner may be the most important thinker for our age, for reasons we will explore in this workshop. 

The Austrian-born Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was a visionary philosopher, architect, artist, and occultist. He is best known today for developing homeopathy and establishing Waldorf Schools, still the largest movement of independent education in the West, as well as creating biodynamic agriculture, a forerunner to today’s organic farming. Despite these achievements, his works are rarely read outside of Anthroposophic circles. Anthroposophy is the "white occult" movement he founded over a century ago to counteract the negative occult currents he saw gathering force in Europe at that time.

According to cultural critic William Irwin Thompson, the “Steinerian vision” “looks at the human as so completely embedded in the animal, vegetal, and mineral evolution of the solar system that it becomes nonsense to separate a fictive ‘matter’ from mind, and a mere three dimensions from ten. . . . All of the seemingly mystical perceptions of Steiner have a biological relevance that fits a new kind of science, and a new kind of culture.”

 

The recently rediscovered abstract artist Hilma af Klint was Steiner’s student. Her paintings convey esoteric ideas and principles from Anthroposophy.

When I discovered Steiner, I was amazed by the exalted quality of his thinking—opening onto vast new realms of visionary possibility—and his deep humanity. Against the materialist tendencies of his age, he proposed a “spiritual science” as rigorously grounded as any of the natural or behavioral sciences, but based upon “supersensible” perceptions, attained through an evolution of our cognitive capacities. “Spiritual science attempts to speak about non-sensory things in the same way that the natural sciences speak about sense-perceptible things,” he wrote. 

Steiner conceived of thinking as a spiritual path: “In thinking we have that element given us which welds our separate individuality into one whole with the cosmos. In so far as we sense and feel (and also perceive), we are single beings; in so far as we think, we are the all-one being that pervades everything.”

From his visionary explorations of the Akashic record, Steiner believed he incarnated with a specific mission: To bring the knowledge of reincarnation back to the West, which we had lost with the rise of Christianity and the closing of the Pagan Mystery Schools. In Steiner's elaborate cosmology, not only do individuals return again and again, but the Earth itself reincarnates. Steiner believed that we are approaching the end of the  fourth incarnation of the Earth. This gives us new esoteric capacities and responsibilities. In his books and lectures, he defines a healthy path for esoteric self development that is still relevant today.

 

According to Steiner, we currently possess four “bodies” which he called the Physical Body, the Etheric Body, and Astral Body, and the “I” or Ego. As we transition to the fifth incarnation of the Earth, we have the capacity to develop a fifth “body,” which Steiner called “the Spirit Self.” I will define what Steiner means by these “bodies” in my presentation.

 

Steiner believed we can develop “organs” of “super-sensible” perception and cognition. Beyond inductive or deductive reasoning, we can access higher forms of cognition, which he defined as “imagination,” “inspiration,” and “intuition.”

 

Steiner wrote in depth about beings of the spiritual realm who act upon humanity and shape our destiny. Two of the most important of these super-sensible forces he called “Lucifer” and “Ahriman.” We will discuss Steiner’s understanding of these beings and how his ideas mesh with other occult traditions.