Anthroposophy: the path of knowledge created by Rudolf Steiner

On a green hill near Basel, in the Swiss town of Dornach, stands an imposing concrete building, with a geometry inspired by the organic and the spiritual.

It is called Goetheanum in honor of Goethe, the great German poet and naturalist of two centuries ago, and is the headquarters of a worldwide movement that is just over a hundred years old, the anthroposophy.

The name derives from anthropos“human being”, and sophia“wisdom”, because it is defined as “a knowledge that the human being can obtain from himself, developing his innate ability to know and intuit”.

His founder, Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), defined anthroposophy in the last weeks of his life as “a path of knowledge to guide what is spiritual in the human being towards what is spiritual in the universe”.

From anthroposophy to Waldorf pedagogy and biodynamic agriculture

Steiner’s anthroposophy is a complete and unique philosophywith applications in multiple fields.

From anthroposophy come, among other initiatives, the Waldorf pedagogy and the biodynamic agricultureas well as natural health products such as the Weleda and Demeter lines, all of which reach a much wider circle of people than those who consider themselves “anthroposophists”.

His philosophical training convinced Steiner that consciousness is the center of existence and that the human being can become a protagonist in the evolution of the cosmos through the evolution of consciousness.

Steiner had been in charge of editing Goethe’s scientific work, and inspired by him, he found a way to elevate human knowledge beyond the usual experience of the senses, cultivating imagination and inspiration to finally reach a rigorous development of intuition.

In various texts, Steiner proposes self-awareness exercises Destined to reach higher states of consciousness. This careful cultivation of intuition allowed Steiner to bring innovative perspectives to disciplines as disparate as beekeeping and architecture.

Thus, a series of lectures by Steiner has become a classic for bee lovers, while architecture handbooks mention Steiner as one of the few great self-taught architects.

The current Goetheanum in Dornach was conceived by Steiner and has been described as a masterpiece of expressionist architecture of the 20th century.

Steiner had also been the architect of the previous Goetheanum, located on the same hill, with a much more sinuous design and built basically in wood. This building was the victim of a fire – surely provoked – on the last day of 1922.

On the other hand, he exerted a notable influence on various artists (from Kandinsky to Joseph Beuys) and together with his second wife, Marie Steiner, developed a spiritual dance with healing properties, the eurythmy.

He also wrote dramatic works with a spiritual content that are still performed in Dornach to this day.

Steiner describes in triads the body and society and considers that the harmonious functioning of this should reflect that of a healthy organism.

Society should focus on common benefitwith the economy at its base (not at its peak as it happens in our world upside down), the regulatory laws of coexistence in its middle part, and culture and spirituality (what truly makes us human) at its top. .

This tripartite perspective, which Steiner developed especially after the First World War, tries to develop the classic motto “liberty, equality, fraternity”.

It inspired some of the pioneers of the ethical banking and attracted the attention of various politicians, but Steiner, who was equally on the same page with factory workers and businessmen, did not want to go into politics.

The anthroposophic medicine approach

Anthroposophic medicine places great importance on what it calls the “rhythmic system” (the respiratory and circulatory systems, both characterized by their rhythms) and focuses on the personnot in disease.

Steiner believed that each ailment is unique and personal, and that in the face of similar symptoms what for one person is a remedy for another may turn out to be a poison.

According to anthroposophical medicine, all disease has its origin in a imbalance of spiritual forces that accompany life.

This approach, which does not reject the advances of orthodox medicine but tries to frame them in a broader context, today has practitioners in all European countries and various clinics (one of them, in Switzerland, bears the name of the collaborator and physician Steiner staff, Ita Wegman).

The alternative education of Waldorf schools

Waldorf schools have been, since their foundation in Stuttgart in 1919, the system of alternative and non-denominational education with more followers in the world.

They focus on the creative potential and aesthetic aspect of each child and in their capacity to marvel at the world, oriented towards the harmonious development of the multiple qualities of the person (instead of the learning promoted by the PISA reports, which prioritizes the intellectual over the creative).

It is considered that up to the age of seven the basic occupation of boys and girls must be to play (and learn by playing) and that only from the age of seven are they ready to delve into reading and writing (former students of Waldorf schools who learn to read and write at the age of seven, then reach an above-average level of literacy).

Anthroposophy also stands out in the education of children with special needs, such as the one practiced in Camphill communities, known for the extraordinary affection shown by caregivers. Steiner believed that children with special needs are, above all, “children whose soul requires special care.”

Biodynamic agriculture, an interconnected living system

Biodynamic agriculture views a farm or garden as a living system –not as a sum of material elements– that it is necessary to “invigorate”, stimulating the health of the soil and the multiple influences it receives.

Biodynamic agriculture includes the criteria of organic farming (avoid pesticides and other contaminants) and frames them in a broader context, which takes into account the cycle of the seasonss and the cycles of the Moon, as well as the influence of other beneficial cosmic or terrestrial forces.

This often makes it possible to obtain products – which are identified with the demeter seal– clearly more nutritious and tasty than those of conventional origin.

Science and technology with a holistic vision

A science attentive to qualitative It is another of the objectives of anthroposophy, following in the footsteps of Goethe (discoverer of the human intermaxillary bone and founder of morphology, among other scientific merits).

The Anthroposophical Society Based in Dornach, it has branches dedicated to areas such as Botany, Zoology, Optics, Astronomy or Mathematics (with a special interest in Projective Geometry).

Steiner, like Goethe, rejected the mechanistic and materialistic character of much of modern science, and saw the need to complement it with a more holistic, qualitative and participatory approach.

The increasing technologization of everyday life worried Steiner greatly (already a century ago!). He considered that the more the power of materialism and technology grows, the more we must revitalize the inner strength of consciousness and of spirituality.

There is nothing in it of desire to return to the past, but of interest in the inner growth and the evolution of consciousness towards levels that today we can barely imagine.

Anthroposophy is obviously not opposed to material development, but recognizes that this is only an instrument that must be at the service of what is genuinely human.

It’s hard to imagine what Steiner would feel or think if he saw more and more of humanity’s attention getting caught up in a web of media trivia and electronic screens of all sizes.

The influence of theosophy

The christian spiritualityreinterpreted in a very unconventional way, stands in the background of Steiner’s vision, according to which, for example, for a little over a century we have been in a new age in which the archangel Michael has a beneficial influence.

At a central stage of his life, Steiner found himself very influenced by theosophya movement almost forgotten today but which attracted many inquiring minds in Europe a century ago and which helped to popularize Eastern ideas and practices such as karma and yoga in the West.

But theosophy decidedly bet on the eastern spirituality (bet that would soon take the form of an Indian boy, Jiddu Krishnamurti), while Steiner and his followers had a distinctly Christian sensibility.

Steiner ended up turning away from Theosophy to follow in his own footsteps, but Theosophical influence left its mark on its esoteric dimension that includes unusual descriptions of remote historical cycles, from the creation of the cosmos, through the “Lemurian” era and Atlantis to reach our days and project into the future.

In fact, Steiner’s books and lectures leave one perplexed, given their unusual combination of solid knowledge and suggestive insights alongside hardly credible assertions. These aspects of his work have contributed to the fact that he has not been fairly valued in the academic field.

Steiner’s doubts

steiner did not claim infallibility of his method of knowledge. He recognized that not everything he intuited could be accurate or right. Some of his visions are surely inaccurate, and Steiner himself asked not to be believed at face value, especially when his intuitions do not fit with our experience.

It therefore seems sensible to approach Steiner and anthroposophy as a world of multiple dimensions from which we only take what truly resonates with us.

If Steiner were our contemporary, it is likely that he would have expressed his ideas and intuitions in a different way, less imbued with expressionist aesthetics and theosophical esotericism, and more open to dialogue with modern science and with the spiritual legacy of non-Western cultures.

Even so, Steiner is one of the characters from the Europe of a century ago who deserves the most attention today, and the leafy tree of anthroposophy continues to bear fruit on many branches.

Short biography of Rudolf Steiner

born in 1861 in a small town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of Croatia. The family soon moved to Vienna, and it was this city that most influenced their formation.

He received a doctorate in Philosophy in 1891, and in 1893 he published one of his most important works, The philosophy of freedom (Ed. Rudolf Steiner). By 1900, he was a respected independent expert on Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, or Nietzsche.

In the first quarter of the century it became a incredibly prolific speakercapable of speaking on all kinds of topics in the main European cities: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna,…