In its tenth anniversary issue The Southern Cross Review has some beautiful poems by Hermann Hesse among other contributions that are worth a look.

From a lecture to the Goetheanum workmen -

"Concepts fall apart in the physical body, and yet human beings do not want to learn to think with the etheric body. They do not want to think independently. Now you see why, in the year 1893, it became necessary for me to write the book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. It is not the contents of this book that are so important, although obviously at that time one wished to tell the world what was said in it, but the most important thing is that independent thinking appeared in this book for the first time. No-one can possibly understand this book who does not think independently. From the beginning, page by page, a reader must become accustomed to using his etheric body if he would think these thoughts at all. Hence this book is a means of education - a very important means - and must be taken up as such.

Anthroposophical Leading Thought (4)

I would like to share these inspiring words from the author and poet, Ben Okri.
 
Mental Fight (selected extracts)
By Ben Okri

This extract needs its context so the following reference from Steiner is a long one.
 

Some of you will have noticed that the Rudolf Steiner Archive is offline at the moment.  I have received the following explanation and request for support.

Please consider making a donation to the http://www.rsarchive.org/. The site is down, the server has been damaged by a power surge. James Stewart is struggling financially to replace it. If you live in the US donations are tax deductable. They can be sent to The e.Lib, Inc. P.O. Box 293 Fremont, MI 49412-0293 US or made through Paypal to The e.Lib. Thank you.

Dr Unger asked about order in thinking.
Dr Steiner: That would be something more ambitious. It would be good if you would develop how the first chapters of The Philosophy of Freedom could be understood, if you could work out a eurythmical consonantal study; where the chapters go on to “moral imagination”, you arrive at the vowel element. Lead everything to eurythmy.

From the “Faculty Meeting at the Eurythmeum, Stuttgart, 30th April 1924” (in R. Steiner, Eurythmy: Its birth and development. GA 277a. Anastasi, Weobley 2002. P.142)

As a contribution to this festival day, I offer a reminder of the mighty task before us: to hold the wellbeing of the world (and its environment) within our self-aware activity. 
 
Mother Nature, your sustaining presence
I bear deep within my will               
And my will’s fiery vigour
Can temper my impulsive mind,                 
Evoking self-awareness  
To hold me wholly in me.
 
-- Rudolf Steiner, Calendar of the Soul: 26 (trans. JR)--end

An interesting essay on Anthroposophical and Transpersonal Worldviews by Robert McDermott is available in the latest Southern Cross Review. 

Robert writes:

“I am often accused by my East Coast friends of having “gone Californian,” and by my San Francisco Bay Area friends of being still “very East Coast.” Neither characterization is intended as a compliment. Reference points for New York academic life tend to be the canonical tradition from Socrates to Godimer whereas comparable reference points for the Bay Area transpersonal community tend to be Asian spiritual teachers; meditation techniques; goddess, shamanic and Jungian symbols; astrological archetypes and Enneagram points. When I appear to my East Coast friends as too Californian, it is because of my delight in the varieties of spirit manifest in transpersonal psychologists and artists, in the eighty dharma centers in the Bay Area, sacred medicine researchers, teachers of biography, eco-feminists, multi-traditional mystics, organizational experts, and astrologers. Anthroposophy is not ordinarily listed in such a catalogue, and there are excellent reasons why it should not be, as well as reasons why it should be hence this essay." more...

Tim recently posted this extract from Occult Science – an Outline: Chapter 1.

In the spirit and true sense of the word, no real scientist will be able to find a contradiction between his science built upon the facts of the sense world and the method by which the supersensible world is investigated. The scientist makes use of certain instruments and methods. He produces his instruments by transforming what “nature” offers him. The supersensible method of knowledge also makes use of an instrument. This instrument is man himself. This instrument, too, must first be made ready for higher research. The capacities and forces given to man by nature, without his assistance, must be transformed into higher capacities and powers. Man is thereby able to make himself the instrument for research in the supersensible world.

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA013/English/AP1972/GA013_c01.html

I have come to ‘know’ Rudolf Steiner from reading his writings and lectures that have been translated into English. I have never met him face to face although I have seen photographs. He died before I was born. Do I really have any knowledge of the good doctor?