Rudolf Steiner I am amazed that I just discovered this fellow yesterday. He was a fabulous intellectual from Germany that gave over 6,000 lectures and wrote many books. One of his books: "The Philosophy of Freedom" is being rediscovered today. I feel he was about 100 years ahead of his time. He left us with a wonderful educational concept known as Waldorf Schools. There are several in America and throughout the World.
When I was reading about him I was thinking that his principals were very similar to Maria Montessori. Well, as I kept on reading, I discovered that they had studied the same philosophers and had individually arrived at the same conclusion.
That conclusion is that children need to learn in natural environments. They both believed in Holistic education where several subjects are acquired at the same time. They both made the connection between music, art, performing and the ability to remember more information as well as be able to transfer the information from one application to the other.
We need this now more than ever because as evolution speeds up we will need people that are capable of solving problems quickly, morally, and accurately.
Submitted by Tom Last on Sun, 06/27/2010 - 8:25pm.
A new Philosophy of Freedom translation is needed to replace the existing translations done by spiritualists. Translator Michael Wilson, in his introduction to his version of The Philosophy of Freedom (POF), says the mind is the central theme, and then admits he avoided using the term "mind" and "mental", instead considers it his "task to introduce readers to Steiner's concepts of spirit and soul." Why, so they can become Theosophists?
Then he repeats the Anthroposophical dogma that "Steiner's philosophical path leads to an experience of the reality of the spiritual world". Will we have visions of Atlantis? There is some truth to what he says, but this dogma, constantly being repeated, has lead to unacceptable confusion and dismissal of POF.
Any work describing Steiner's point of view in terms of English philosophy would have to deal with the mind as a central theme, but here our task is to introduce readers to Steiner's concepts of spirit and soul. For Steiner, the spirit is experienced directly in the act of intuitive thinking. The human spirit is that part of us that thinks, but the spiritual world is not limited to the personal field of the individual human being; it opens out to embrace the eternal truths of existence.
The English word “spirit” gives the sense of something more universal, less personal, than “mind”, and since Steiner's philosophical path leads to an experience of the reality of the spiritual world, I have kept the word wherever possible, using “mind” or “mental” in a few places where it seemed more appropriate. --Michael Wilson, Introduction to his translation of The Philosophy of Freedom
(50:44)
Translator Michael Lipson is the one who decided he would change the title of POF to Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. Lipson maintains Wilsons task of spiritualizing POF. No wonder, considering he is a practicing Zen Buddhist. Here is a radio broadcast from WAMC Public Radio of Michael Lipson on Meditation and Psychotherapy 6/10/08: Lipson discusses meditation and its possible uses in promoting psychological well-being with host Brian Shields. Lipson is also a radio psychologist who teaches buddhist meditation.
Incidently, The Philosophy of Freedom is a modern Western path of science. Those who already have a training in pure thinking are the engineers, computer scientists, and others with a foundation in mathematical thinking. POF is written for the scientifically minded or those who want to become such.
Why do so many "spiritual" people have difficulty with The Philosophy of Freedom? "It is important that we at least have the good will and make the effort to advance to the kind of thinking that is free of emotion—to begin with, free of the emotions we know so well in ordinary life. If the content of The Philosophy of Freedom appeals to people because their feelings incline them to a more spiritual way of looking at things, they have not yet achieved pure thinking. Only those people who take it in because of the thoughts logical sequence and the way they support each other are relating to the book in the right way." Rudolf Steiner
What philosophers call the absolute, the eternal being, the ground of the world, what the religions call God, this we call: the idea. Everything in the world that does not appear directly as idea, will ultimately be recognized as going forth from the idea.Rudolf Steiner, Goethean Science
Excerpt from Humanism and Polemical Populism
By Peter Normann Waage
I am not a member of the Anthroposophical Society or any other world view organization. I do however harbor a great respect for Rudolf Steiner, first of all as a philosopher and social reformer. That is where we find the "anarcho-individualism" that Rudolf Steiner subscribed to in the 1890's.
A survey of philosophical and socio-political works by Steiner conducted with the same objectivity one would expect with regard to more officially recognized thinkers, shows that the originator of anthroposophy was a humanistic rationalist. However, the rationality ascribed to the human being by Steiner does not stop at the borderline of faith. An essential feature of his philosophy is the argument that each single individual, regardless of race, gender, or social class, possesses an absolute value and ability to relate freely and self-dependently to all demands and authorities of a material and spiritual nature.
History cannot show one pioneer who is worth the digesting of absolutely everything. Isaac Newton won't be remembered for his speculations about the Apocalypse of St. John. Steiner is not interesting because of his faults, but because of his project: To create a bridge between insights that until now have been reserved for religion and faith, and modern scientific reason. He wanted to rescue the individual and its humanness from drowning in foggy spiritualism as well as in stiffened materialism.
From this vantage point, anthroposophy is not so far from the ideal that editor Emberland describes in Humanist's editorial article: "In humanism, the human being stands in the center - and this means unabridged and absolutely: No visions or utopia - regardless of how alluring - and no 'necessary emergencies' - regardless of how imposing - can force us to abandon this ideal."
Where the human being is placed in the center, its potential for development becomes visible. Whether one stands alone or as part of a movement, one's fellow man must be ascribed the ability to learn from life.
As individual thinkers, reacting to this radiating influence, we tend to be primarly guided by our instinctive antipathies and sympathies. Very rare is the individual who can stand outside this inner psychological common human condition. One of the hallmarks of this age is the escalation of the naturally arising conflicts that come from our individual tendency to give into these likes and dislikes - for example, modern political dialog in America is mostly an undisciplined cacaphony of shouted likes and dislikes, seldom bearing any real wisdom.
more inside.....
Submitted by Tom Last on Tue, 06/22/2010 - 8:24am.
FREE DOWNLOAD
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7 Part Attempt to Summarize Rudolf Steiner's Epistemology (text below)
(1:42) Path To Freedom
(2:00) Desire For Knowledge
(3:25) Free To Think
(6:02) Living The Unreflective Life
(4:42) Thinking Perception Of The Idea
(4:42) Free Creation Of Knowledge
(5:45) Cognition Is A Free Decision
This story begins in Kibbutz Herdoff in the Lower Galil, a community located in the Jezreel Valley Region. The community, which was founded about 30 years ago boasts a profitable organic industry, but Yad L’Achim explains things are not as innocent as they appear, reporting the community follows Anthroposophy, a spiritual philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, which R’ Lifshitz explains is avoda zara (idol worship) by every Torah definition of the word. (Yad L’Achim engages in a wide range of activities aimed at protecting Jews from missionaries and other spiritual threats, such as: "To our great sorrow, the phenomenon of Jewish girls getting involved with Arabs has reached startling proportions.")
Rabbi Lifshitz explains that consumers buying the products, including frum mehadrin-seeking shoppers, are directly funding idol worship and in this case, community efforts to increase their numbers, outreach programs targeting Jewish children. He explains the community has an educational system inculcating children with its philosophy, and is quite active in promoting its agenda.
Wendy adds:
In their world centre in Dornoch, Switzerland the Anthroposophists blatantly advertize that they are occultists. This is a straight-foreward sitra achra orientation. Self-confessed "do it all" immorality is at their core. They explore and exploit sorcery as well. Thank you Chabad and Yad L'Achim for exposing this situation.
Why are they in Israel at all? Why are we being exposed to them in the market place here, supporting their deceptive, destructive activities by unknowingly buying the product lines with which they are associated? Tnuvah seems so far to have fascilitated their successful circumnavigation of the local rules of Kashrut so that the frum market can be penetrated unawares.
Perhaps Tnuvah can now compensate us for our shock by removing the Anthroposophists from their dairy rosters, our diets, our pocketbooks, our children's lives and perhaps even the Holy Land. Are they Israeli OR international interests?
Philosophy Behind Waldorf Education
By kittyflip, Philippines
Each of us is meant to be a free spirit, just as each rose seed is meant to be a rose. - Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner
Waldorf Education is born out of a philosophy of freedom, living at the core of anthroposophy. It is the body of work found in anthroposophy as a core of Waldorf education.
It also a religion based upon faith according to several Steiner lectures relate to child education.
But the core philosophy behind Steiner’s work is the Philosophy of Freedom. The questions are: Why not make the freedom philosophy the main topic at parent’s night and school tours, isn’t this the best public introduction?
I read this ten years ago in my teacher training and I remember feeling that my life had changed because I read this book.
It addresses the capacities of the human being by causing the reader to exercise those capacities as he or she is reading. In this way it is fascinating.
I always try to have a meditation/inner work book on the nightstand, and this is the current one.
Blog: The Gray Market Report
By W. Blake Gray The problem with organic certification is that it's too rigid, not allowing exceptions in exceptional circumstances. I'm in Texas right now and just visited with two wineries that got no crops two years in a row. Try telling them that it's most important to follow organic rules. As for biodynamics, it seems effective, but at its heart it's religion, not science.
Reply by Brigitte Armenier
I appreciate your effort in trying to grasp what Biodynamics is at heart. Unfortunately, the statement that "Biodynamics is religion, not science" seems to ignore the nature of the predicates.
Science is not scientism, and the scientific path of inquiry is not the reductionist answers of chemical farming. Similarly, religion at church is not experience and practice in the vineyard: all around the world, one will find biodynamists who profess all religions as well as atheism and agnosticism, while what they share is a universal (not global) knowledge and work with the Biodynamic preparations.
To approach what lies at the heart of Biodynamics, one needs to read and work with Steiner's foundation work: "The Philosophy of Freedom," which came as the development of the complementary Hegel, Schelling and Fichte. From there on, the fact that "Biodynamics seems effective" becomes understandable.
In the most recent issue of the Goetheanum News (Sept/Oct 1996) Manfred Schmidt-Brabant reports that world membership in this Society currently stands at 52,203. This figure was much the same 22 years ago -- then about fifty thousand world-wide members. Manfred Schmidt-Brabant then says: "We may ask, as so often, why is the Society growing so slowly?"
In his discussion of the moral will in The Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner remarks that "A free being is one who can want what he himself considers right." Here is the problem in a nutshell: for how can anyone know something to be right unless he has some moral principles by which he is guided? And how is he to arrive at these moral principles unless he possesses historical knowledge -- both his own history and experience and that of mankind in general?
Certainly Rudolf Steiner’s epistemology and ideas relating to the moral will can be clearly distinguished from Aleister Crowley’s nihilism -- "Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law." Yet there are anthroposophists who, in dismissing the role of historical knowledge, come dangerously close to Crowleyism. This problem has arisen, I think, because Rudolf Steiner failed to provide, in his epistemological work, any historical examples of what he considered the moral will to be.
I do heartily wish that in his chapter, "Moral Imagination" (in which his definition of moral will is found) Steiner had refrained from condemning laws in general, Catholic confession, and the like. And I wish he had given us some concrete historical examples to go on. He says: "[From this it follows] for ethics that, though we can certainly see the connection between later moral concepts and earlier, we cannot get even a single new moral idea out of the earlier ones. As a moral being, the individual produces his own moral content."
But the fact of individuality as such is not sufficient for a grounding of ethics. The whole problem for ethics is not individuality, but the fact that individuals live together in society. Thus to ground ethics in individuality as such is deeply incoherent. We live with others, and ethics is about the "how" this living-together is possible.
It is not easy for me to see how we may preserve moral standards in the light of Steiner’s dictum that "the individual produces his own moral content." The Old Testament commandment, "Thou shalt not commit murder" ["Thou shalt not kill"] may certainly seem old hat to us now. But do we really want to live in a society where that commandment is ignored because people flock to the new commandment of "producing moral will out of themselves"?
In the last thirty or so years we have learned in America how problematic it is to ground ethics in individual choice. In elevating individual choice in the abortion right, for example, we have in effect declared that the weak are under no protection. It is as much to say that "Might equals right." What is the point of living in a society of laws if "Might equals right"? Doesn't this undermine the entire justification of the State or the government for existing?
Rudolf Steiner affirms that, "... the laws of the state, one and all, just like other objective laws of morality, have had their origin in the intuitions of free spirits," his purpose nevertheless is to ground ethics in a free morality: "Nature makes of man a merely natural being; society makes of him a law-abiding being; only he himself can make of himself a free man... The standpoint of free morality, then, does not declare the free spirit to be the only form in which a man can exist. It sees in the free spirit only the last stage of man’s evolution. This is not to deny that conduct according to standards has its justification as one stage in evolution. Only we cannot acknowledge it as the absolute standpoint in morality. For the free spirit overcomes the standards in the sense that he does not just accept commandments as his motives but orders his action according to his own impulses (intuitions)."
I think that Steiner’s great discovery here is that true morality does indeed spring from inner freedom. If this were not the case, morality could only mean an automatic obedience, the conformity of an automaton to an external rule. Yet the problem with this passage is that the cut he makes between nature and society is a little too clean. For man is neither wholly natural nor wholly social: man is a historical being. History is the missing term of Steiner’s ethics. It is an omission of astonishing dimension -- an absence from which the anthroposophist can only erect improvisation as a moral stance. "But the question today is, what shall we fashion -- quite fresh and new, without a past, without a tradition -- at the periphery, not determined by any center." (Arthur Zajonc) Here is a clear statement of postmodernism, which is the philosophy of the historyless, centerless void.
Goethe's Science
In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884 and 1897, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially phenomenological in nature, rather than theory- or model-based. He developed this conception further in several books, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897), particularly emphasizing the transformation in Goethe's approach from the physical sciences, where experiment played the primary role, to plant biology, where imagination was required to find the biological archetypes (Urpflanze), and postulated that Goethe had sought but been unable to fully find the further transformation in scientific thinking necessary to properly interpret and understand the animal kingdom.
Steiner defended Goethe's qualitative description of color as arising synthetically from the polarity of light and darkness, in contrast to Newton's particle-based and analytic conception. He emphasized the role of evolutionary thinking in Goethe's discovery of the intermaxillary bone in human beings; Goethe expected human anatomy to be an evolutionary transformation of animal anatomy.
Knowledge and Freedom
Steiner approached the philosophical questions of knowledge and freedom in two stages. The first was his dissertation, published in expanded form in 1892 as Truth and Knowledge. Here Steiner suggests that there is an inconsistency between Kant's philosophy, which postulated that the essential verity of the world was inaccessible to human consciousness, and modern science, which assumes that all influences can be found in what Steiner termed the “sinnlichen und geistlichen” (sensory and mental/spiritual) world to which we have access. Steiner terms Kant's “Jenseits-Philosophie” (philosophy of an inaccessible beyond) a stumbling block in achieving a satisfying philosophical viewpoint.
Steiner postulates that the world is essentially an indivisible unity, but that our consciousness divides it into the sense-perceptible appearance, on the one hand, and the formal nature accessible to our thinking, on the other. He sees in thinking itself an element that can be strengthened and deepened sufficiently to penetrate all that our senses do not reveal to us. Steiner thus explicitly denies all justification to a division between faith and knowledge; otherwise expressed, between the spiritual and natural worlds. Their apparent duality is conditioned by the structure of our consciousness, which separates perception and thinking, but these two faculties give us two complementary views of the same world; neither has primacy and the two together are necessary and sufficient to arrive at a complete understanding of the world. In thinking about perception (the path of natural science) and perceiving the process of thinking (the path of spiritual training), it is possible to discover a hidden inner unity between the two poles of our experience. (Chapter 4)
Truth, for Steiner, is paradoxically both an objective discovery and yet "a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. The task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality."
A new stage of Steiner's philosophical development is expressed in his Philosophy of Freedom. Here, he further explores potentials within thinking: freedom, he suggests, can only be approached asymptotically and with the aid of the "creative activity" of thinking. Thinking can be a free deed; in addition, it can liberate our will from its subservience to our instincts and drives. Free deeds, he suggests, are those for which we are fully conscious of the motive for our action; freedom is the spiritual activity of penetrating with consciousness our own nature and that of the world, and the real activity of acting in full consciousness. This includes overcoming influences of both heredity and environment: "To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts - not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality."
Steiner affirms Darwin's and Haeckel's evolutionary perspectives but extends this beyond its materialistic consequences; he sees human consciousness, indeed, all human culture, as a product of natural evolution that transcends itself. For Steiner, nature becomes self-conscious in the human being. Steiner's description of the nature of human consciousness thus closely parallels that of Solovyov.
In human beings, the absolute subject-object appears as such, i.e. as pure spiritual activity, containing all of its own objectivity, the whole process of its natural manifestation, but containing it totally ideally - in consciousness....The subject knows here only its own activity as an objective activity (sub specie object). Thus, the original identity of subject and object is restored in philosophical knowledge.
Sorry because this is not a post with information, but only a question.
I would like to know what you, PoF students ( for "thinking reasons" :) ), think about star/indigo/crystal children and if you know some reliable material about that.
For now I just know that Kühlewind wrote a book about the so-called indigo (title: "Star children" at Google books) and maybe he was really a spiritual scientist doing his reasearch on this, but unfortunately I could not read it until now.
There any other book or material, RELIABLE material?
Two introductions to anthroposophy
There are two major approaches, or gates, to anthroposophy. Each of these is linked to one of Rudolf Steiner's major written books. The first of these, which is perhaps the easiest for most people who feel drawn to this kind of material, is Theosophy, An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man (GA 9; Written 1904)
The second approach is for the hard-nosed philosophical and scientific thinker, the critical, analytical mind, namely The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4; written 1894, initially translated as Philosophy of Spiritual Activity as recommended by the author).
This book has absolutely no supernatural content whatsoever; it provides the philosophical and epistemological foundation for everything Steiner gave out through his lectures later: Humanism, empiricism, and monism, with Charles Darwin's natural science as point of departure. This is the most important of all Steiner's works. 30 years later, when asked which of his works would be best remembered by posterity, Rudolf Steiner answered without a moment's hesitation: "The Philosophy of Freedom will survive all my other works."
The Philosophy of Freedom, often referred to as the PoF for brevity, is quite a heavy digest, however, and may need several re-reads, at least some of the chapters. For this approach, I would recommend first reading Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Vorspeil zu einer Philosophie der Freiheit, translated as Truth and Knowledge and Truth and Science (because "Wissenschaft" means, interestingly, knowledge as well as science.) This is Rudolf Steiner's doctoral thesis, published in 1892 (GA 3) as an introduction to The Philosophy of Freedom. It's a nice introduction to the science of epistemology that also makes it clear why Steiner disagreed with Kant, who was, and still is, the most influential of epistemological philosophers.
Incidentally, I wrote an article about anthroposophy and anarchism about fifteen years ago for the Norwegian anarchist magazine Gateavisa, and some years later I translated it into English: Anthropos Anarchos.
This article puts major emphasis on The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 10 (Freedom — Philosophy and Monism) because it was addressed to skeptical anarchists with a penchant for atheism, or dialectical materialism.
Below is a response to an anonymous comment attached to a Waldorf school smear article by Alice Shapiro.
He compares a Waldorf school to Hitler's Third Reich with this comment after a visit to a Waldorf school in the UK:
"I remember a confusingly anachronistic atmosphere as if I had by time-machine been brought back to Hitler's Third Reich."
Response to Alice Shapiro and commentator by Bruce:
Your posting these hystrical diatribes against the work of Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy and Waldorf Schools is quite an unfortunate demonstration of one whom is allowing his own impotent emotional makeup to allow himself to become a slave to the promotion of an agenda of lies whose only benefit is to help keep mankind enslaved.
Obviously you have no understanding of Rudolf Steiner's work.
The fact of the matter is that I suggest you come to understand Steiner by reading through his Philosophy of Freedom, the basis for all of his work. Recognize and study his work as regards reviving , or rather discovering the epistimological method contained within Goethe's scientific approach. Also understand the true nature of his battles with the Theosophical Society. Recognize that his understanding of the Christ and his conception of evil obsessional forces confronting mankind and the indvidual, where indeed the philosophical method of the Philosophy of Freedom does provide the seed for the truth of the Christ freedom as a dignity of moral freedom and maturity.
Now this is not to say that , Steiner, Anthroposophy, and Waldorf are not open to critique and question, or have been infiltrated, but the scummy articles that you have posted on the subject are quite worthless pieces of pure propagandistic drivel.
Response to Alice Shapiro by Joel:
This material is old hat, and quite biased and superficial. Most quotes above are taken out of context. The story told about the "island" is not at all common in Waldorf, much less anthroposophy. Keep in mind that the Internet is also known as the web of lies and anyone can say anything. This article is not scholarly, or really helpful. Waldorf and anthroposophy, being human activities, will be flawed - that's obvious. "Satanic" - that's not even a bad joke, it's in poor taste and libelous, but who has time to sue and chase down every stupid thing people choose to say.
Rudolf Steiner would not be associated with such a heretical organization as the Roman Catholic Church. You should know that by now Philosophy of Freedom; your nauseating catholic propaganda is a farce.
Rudolf Steiner on the Catholic Church:
The Catholic Church, by doing away with the spirit in the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in the year 869 has always taken care that those belonging to it should never think about the real psycho-spiritual nature of man.
What the Church worked for more and more was that man should not come to a true understanding of his real relationship to Christ. We may say, my dear friends, that the development of the western churches consists really in drawing an ever denser and denser veil over the real secret of Christ.
You see, fundamentally, all institutions are built on external abstractions. When a state is young it has but few laws and people are relatively unfettered by them. The longer a state exists, and especially the longer the various parties in the state apply their clever arguments, the more laws are made until finally no one knows where he is, for there is no longer only one law, but everything is entangled in the meshes of intertwining laws from which one has the greatest difficulty in freeing oneself.
That is the case also with the churches; when a church begins to make its way through the world, it has relatively few dogmas; but men must have something to do, and just as the statesman is always making laws, so do Churchmen create more and more dogmas, until finally everything becomes dogma, dogma becomes consolidated.
Rudolf Steiner's Influence on Modern Germany by Tobias Rapp
The Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner is best known as the somewhat eccentric founder of anthroposophy, widely regarded as a wacky Christian splinter group. He also became a philosopher whose ideas crossed over to the mainstream.
The Kunstmuseum has two major exhibitions devoted to Steiner: "Rudolf Steiner and the Art of Today" and "The Alchemy of Daily Life". In the first part of the show, 15 artists address Steiner's worldview. And these are not anthroposophist artists, but big names.
A piece at the entrance, by Giuseppe Penone, a representative of Italy's Arte Povera movement, consists of biodynamic vegetables placed onto a metal, snail-shaped mould. Olafur Eliasson, the world-famous Berlin-based Danish artist, exhibits a sculpture. Anish Kapoor, who is building a giant, iconic tower in London for the 2012 Summer Olympics, has created a bulge in a wall, next to which visitors can receive neck massages, which are meant to bring together the spirit and the body.
Anish Kapoor sees his work as being engaged with deep-rooted metaphysical polarities; presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place and the solid and the intangible. Throughout Kapoor's sculptures his fascination with darkness and light is apparent. Through this interplay between form and light, Kapoor aspires to evoke sublime experiences, which address primal physical and psychological states.
Submitted by markaqui on Sat, 06/05/2010 - 9:34am.
I consider myself a "Christian" first and foremost. For me this means that I can find something of value even in the Catholic Mass, and it seems to be more than just a childish fantasy. I have even found I have some common ground from which to speak to my evangelical sister and brother in law. I used to look down with pride on their brand of Christianity, imaginging them to be completely deluded, but I realize from their witnessing that they have also been touched by something higher that is a source of guidance and consolation in their lives. I respect what they've been able to find through their devotion to prayer.
I have noticed two poles in spiritual thinking and my hypothesis is that the healthy way is in the middle. One pole is what I hear from some in the Church and from evangelical sources -- that one should rely totally on the power of Christ, that we are nothing in ourselves, that we must never "rely upon our own understanding," and that all power comes from the grace of God as a free gift, not for any work or effort we do. The other pole seems to come from the atheists and also from people who are really into a spiritual practice like meditation -- that it's "all up to us," that we have to do all the work ourselves, that we take 100% responsibility for our lives.
What I'm beginning to sense is that the best solution is to think about it as cooperation -- I have to be active and make my own efforts at growth, and that means putting my own will into my practice, but I also invite Christ in to work with me. When it works I'm given a strength and a lessening of my burdens that seems to come from "oustside" and it seems to be because I've allowed myself to overcome my inner passivity, and then become receptive to God's help.
--markaqui
Submitted by Tom Last on Thu, 06/03/2010 - 4:19pm.
Please point out any errors or post suggestions in this summary of Steiner's epistemology. I don't know how I can condense this to a 10 minute YouTube video, but we will see.
Submitted by Tom Last on Wed, 06/02/2010 - 8:32am.
Cosmic traveler or perhaps alien, Dennis Klocek, a popular anthroposophy guru, tells us about life on Earth from his lecture Transforming Fantasy Into Imagination:
If we come to earth, we have freedom. Well, that sounds like a paradox because if your life is anything like mine I don't feel like I have any freedom at all here on Earth. I'm only free when I kind of go into the spiritual world.
If we really read The Philosophy of Freedom, freedom is the ability for human beings to correct themselves when they find they made a mistake. Metanoia---change your thinking!
You are free to connect any thought with any other thought, and if you've connected one thought with another thought, and then you think it again, and you find that maybe that's an error, you have total freedom to change it because you can connect any thought to any other thought. This is freedom.
And the only place we actually can do that is here on Earth, because here on Earth the tendency for one thought to link to another thought is so pervasive that we are prone to think that whatever sequence of thoughts we think is the correct one.
In order to develop ourselves, Rudolf Steiner has given us The Philosophy of Freedom that says you must learn how to monitor your thinking.
Submitted by Tom Last on Mon, 05/24/2010 - 10:13pm.
Have you ever seen anything come out of the Anthroposophical Society that explains how Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom is a path to freedom and cognitive development in-itself, without the need of anything he gave later?
In a conversation with Rudolf Steiner in 1922 Walter Johannes Stein asked,
“What will remain of your work in thousands of years?
Rudolf Steiner replied: “Nothing but the Philosophy of Freedom,” and then he added: “But everything is contained in it. If someone realizes the act of freedom described there, he finds the whole content of Anthroposophy”.
They will 'not' tell you the study of the book is a thought-training leading to freedom and cognitive development, instead they direct you to outdated exercises he gave to the theosophists. The practice of study of The Philosophy of Freedom is the most effective and appropriate-for-our-age exercise available.
Rudolf Steiner: “Catharsis is an ancient term for the purification of the astral body by means of meditation and concentration exercises. If a reader takes this book as it was meant and relates to it in the way a virtuoso playing a composition on the piano relates to its composer, reproducing the whole piece out of himself, the books organically evolved thought sequence will bring about a high degree of catharsis.”
Sergei O. Prokofieff, perhaps the main supreme leader and writer for the Society, recently wrote a book claiming to discover main theosophy themes within the book, such as the work of the hierarchies, the Rosicrucian impulses, and life between death and rebirth. This work is open to doubt.
Rudolf Steiner: "You will find nothing at all in The Philosophy of Freedom that is derived from clairvoyant communications of spiritual science. It is written for the express purpose of disciplining thinking without any mention of theosophy."
The Society will tell you that The Philosophy of Freedom is just his philosophy book that merely is a foundation for his later theosophy. This has mislead many souls as seen in this post:
A misinformed person's post: It was stated somewhere that the purpose of this book was to lay the foundations on which the author's later spiritual research could rest – but one can certainly skip this "primer."
The truth is you can skip all of Steiner's later work and later esoteric training exercises.
In the first decade of the 20th century, August Ewerbeck got word that there were intimate circles in which Rudolf Steiner gave special esoteric training to those admitted to them. So he asked his teacher whether he too might be allowed to attend, and received the astonishing reply: “You don’t need to! You have understood my Philosophy of Freedom!”
Submitted by Tom Last on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 8:15am.
Corporations will now be replacing God as the creator of life, life created according to a motive of maximum profit. Again, we are reminded that we will only survive if ethics becomes a more powerful motive than greed. The Philosophy of Freedom teaches how the driving force in your life can be conceptual thinking and moral intuition, a force more powerful than any biological or characterological driven motive.
Is the wide spread application of ethical individualism the only thing that can save us now? If you have ever thought about doing more to spread the word about Rudolf Steiner and his solution to the problem of ethics, now may be the time.
Submitted by Tom Last on Wed, 05/19/2010 - 6:05pm.
This is a video comparing Atheist Life vs Religious Life. According to this description of Atheism, Rudolf Steiner seems like he would qualify as an Atheist, if you compare Atheism with Steiner's core principles found in his Philosophy of Freedom. Steiner describes a free human being as a free thinker who expresses his own free morality according to what seems appropriate in each case without being bound to any moral codes or conduct dictated by a god or other authority figure. Sounds like Atheism.
In his first book, Goethean Science, Steiner said this: What the religions call God, this we call, on the basis of our epistemological studies: the idea. This "idea" is arrived at by scientific research using the scientific method on a deeper level than is normally done. Atheists support the scientific method over belief systems. There may be very little if anything an Atheist could reject within the Philosophy of Freedom according to their core principles. The religious would certainly have to condemn Steiner's philosophy or accept that they are only an intermediary step for some, to be left behind at a certain point on the path to freedom.
I am amazed that I just discovered this fellow yesterday. He was a fabulous intellectual from Germany that gave over 6,000 lectures and wrote many books. One of his books: "The Philosophy of Freedom" is being rediscovered today. I feel he was about 100 years ahead of his time. He left us with a wonderful educational concept known as Waldorf Schools. There are several in America and throughout the World. 
I am not a member of the Anthroposophical Society or any other world view organization. I do however harbor a great respect for Rudolf Steiner, first of all as a philosopher and social reformer. That is where we find the "anarcho-individualism" that Rudolf Steiner subscribed to in the 1890's. 
As individual thinkers, reacting to this radiating influence, we tend to be primarly guided by our instinctive antipathies and sympathies. Very rare is the individual who can stand outside this inner psychological common human condition. One of the hallmarks of this age is the escalation of the naturally arising conflicts that come from our individual tendency to give into these likes and dislikes - for example, modern political dialog in America is mostly an undisciplined cacaphony of shouted likes and dislikes, seldom bearing any real wisdom.
This story begins in Kibbutz Herdoff in the Lower Galil, a community located in the Jezreel Valley Region. The community, which was founded about 30 years ago boasts a profitable organic industry, but Yad L’Achim explains things are not as innocent as they appear, reporting the community follows Anthroposophy, a spiritual philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, which R’ Lifshitz explains is avoda zara (idol worship) by every Torah definition of the word. (
Blog: Home School Life
The problem with organic certification is that it's too rigid, not allowing exceptions in exceptional circumstances. I'm in Texas right now and just visited with two wineries that got no crops two years in a row. Try telling them that it's most important to follow organic rules. As for biodynamics, it seems effective, but at its heart it's religion, not science.
In the most recent issue of the Goetheanum News (Sept/Oct 1996) Manfred Schmidt-Brabant reports that world membership in this Society currently stands at 52,203. This figure was much the same 22 years ago -- then about fifty thousand world-wide members. Manfred Schmidt-Brabant then says: "We may ask, as so often, why is the Society growing so slowly?" 
Two introductions to anthroposophy
Below is a response to an anonymous comment attached to a Waldorf school smear article by Alice Shapiro. 
Cosmic traveler or perhaps alien, Dennis Klocek, a popular anthroposophy guru, tells us about life on Earth from his lecture Transforming Fantasy Into Imagination:
Have you ever seen anything come out of the Anthroposophical Society that explains how Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom is a path to freedom and cognitive development in-itself, without the need of anything he gave later?