Rudolf STEINER: 1861-1925
The length and scope of this man has been reduced in our time to just a few splashes that come up when one dives into his deep and potent personage.
To skim over Steiner's volume of work is to accept a handshake upon meeting as a deep and imtimate relationship.
Born in Austria during the final years of the Austrian Empire. As an adult he lived in Vienna, Germany, Switzerland. Steiner wrote many books during his years of mingling in the social circles of the philosophers and intellecutals of the late 19th century Europe. He was active in the controversy of evolution arising from the work of Darwin and Haeckel, and also had a facination for Nietzche. Steiner engaged in the circles of debates but was not opposed to the works of any of these. He published a book on him and gave a number of speeches in commemoration of him following his death. He had become an acquaintance of of Nietzche's sister Elisabeth and was allowed a visit with her brother during his illness. Steiner relayed in his autobiography of a clash with Elisabeth Forster Nietsche saying. "...the many happy hours I spent at the Nietzche archives at Naumburg and Weimer are now remembered with a touch of bitterness." After Nietzche's death in 1900 Elisabeth Nietzche became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. One can still find today the discussions of her questionable editing of Nietzche's unpublished writings and contradictions to his work. Perhaps this was a source of the clash Steiner mentions.
Steiner was well versed in the earlier German philosophers who preceded his era such as Schiller, Goethe, Kant, Fichte. Steiner, at the age of 21, was given the task of editing Goethe's scietific work which continued until he was age 36. By age 38 he had began his long legacy of lectures on spiritual and worldly insights.
In September of 1900, nine years after the death of Blavatsky, Steiner was invited to speak at the weekly lectures of the Theosophical Society. This was the beginning foundation stone as a forum for Steiner's lectures, which he always noted were of his own insight. As relayed in Steiner's own words he lectured on his own spiritual insights and the Theosophical Society accepted his insight. His lectures presented his own spirtual knowledge in his own chosen way. In his words,
"I did not subscribe to any sectarian dogma; I remained someone who expressed what he believed himself to have the power to express about his own experiences of the spiritual world."
Steiner relayed in his autobiography that he "did not count so much on the members of the Theosophical Society as on people in general who attended meetings with open heart and mind when earnest spiritual knowledge was being seriouisly cultivated." He viewed the Theosophical Society as a necessary starting point to offer public lectures on the spiritual world and spiritual knowledge, as this audience attended lectures solely for this content.
The fundamental difference between Steiner's method and content and that of Blavatsky's and Bessant's promotion of theosophy, was that Steiner chose to pass on only his direct knowledge and experiences with occult traditions. He utilized a discipline similar to scientific research, with his own being as the product of ongoing experiment, per se. Steiner did not lecture on any religion or religious beliefs, but formulated his own learning, experiences, and understanding of the mysteries of these anceint teachings in to a series of lectures and books on his experiential findings. The path and purpose of Theosophy had involved spreading teachings of the "Oriental" wisdom which was perhaps lacking in the Western cultures, but evolved under Bessant into a singular mission to promote a personage who was to become "the Christ" reincarnated in a new life on earth.
By 1913 Steiner had firmly establish his work in what became the Anthroposophical Society. Through his lectures and the relationships recorded by those who knew him it remains clear that not only did Steiner have high regard for the truth at the heart of the ancient wisdom of the Orient, and an understanding of these teachings, but that he acknowledged with reverence the writings of the sacred and ancient Hindu scriptures. But Steiner saw his own work as centered in modern time and the necessary spitirual evolution of humanity in a world of the increasing devolution of man in a world trending toward materialism.
The volume of insight and experience of the spiritual world, and the depth of coverage of the ancient myths, cultures, knowledge and worlds existing beyond our own reference of time, these works which have been left to us by Rudolf Steiner are encyclopedic. Just as are the works of his contemporaries and counterparts whom one must engage with as well in order to gain access to the actual depth of the actual source, the ancient wisdom.
To fully take in Rudolf Steiner one also must take in the others like him, who as well left us keys to our own locked doors, just as keys were left to them.
Steiner, 1861- 1925, lived during the same period as Inventor Nicola Tesla 1856-1943; John Worrel Keely 1837-1898; Physicist Albert Einstein 1879-1955; psychologist and alchemist Carl Jung 1875-1961; Alchemist and Egyptologist R A Schwaller de Lubicz 1887-1961; Writer and Egyptologist Isha Schwaller de Lubicz 1885-1963; Activist Mahatma Gandhi 1869-1948; Physicist Wolfgang Pauli 1900-1958; Physicist Werner Heisenberg 1901-1976; and the others...
The biography by Johannes Hemleben and autobiography by Steiner himself are essential. The resources of Thomas H Meyer, based in Basel are high quality, and of course the Steiner archives of books and lectures are highly valuable if one is fully aware of choosing the translations of his work done by persons who lived among him and were indeed a part of his world and work. Modern non human translation will loose the very essence of human being, and relay instead merely the mechanical material words fashioned without soul.
