How to filter-out the "outlandish and bizarre" elements in Rudolf Steiner

Of all the important thinkers of the twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner is perhaps the most difficult to come to grips with. For the unprepared reader, his work presents a series of daunting obstacles. 

To begin with, there is the style, which is formidably abstract, and as unappetizing as dry toast. But a determined reader could learn to put up with that.

The real problem lies with the content, which is often so outlandish and bizarre that the reader suspects either a hoax or a confidence trick. 

Books like Cosmic Memory, with its account of Atlantis and Lemuria, seem to belong on the same shelf as titles like Our Hollow Earth, or My trip to Venus in a Flying Saucer. 

The resulting sense of frustration is likely to cause even the most open-minded reader to give up in disgust.

The first paragraph of Rudolf Steiner, by Colin Wilson, 1985.

*

The Big Problem with Rudolf Steiner (as I have said many times) is that most of what he said and wrote was wrong; but some of what he wrote is sufficient to establish him as one of a handful of the most vital thinkers of the past couple of centuries. 

But because most of Steiner (a very high percentage!) is wrong; on the one hand, most people reject his work outright; while on the other hand, Steiner's disciples and followers (mostly in the Anthroposophical Society, which he founded) are mostly wrong in what they believe - to the point that they miss the significance and importance of what he was right about.  

What Steiner needs, therefore, is scholars who will take was is good and leave aside what is not; and the closest we have to this is Owen Barfield who, in addition, added much of value to what he took from Steiner. 

But even Barfield seems to have been unable to be clear about the nature of Steiner's work, and respected him to the point that he never (that I have seen) denied anything that Steiner ever said. What Barfield instead did was - in his writings - focus on the aspects of Steiner about which he was most sure; and said little or nothing about the colossal number of claims that Steiner made about... everything under the sun, and indeed from many ages before the sun. 

Barfield always recommended Steiner's earliest philosophical books; but did not make clear to the putative reader that most of Steiner's later books will strike most people as simply absurd, and obviously false. 

My understanding is that the major problem for those who regard Steiner as important, and who accept his core analysis and teachings; cannot find grounds from within this teachings for rejecting anything that Steiner ever said or wrote. 

Steiner purports do be doing a spiritual science; and repeatedly emphasizes that anyone can test his claims for themselves by spiritual investigation - yet, in practice, it seems that nobody ever feels able to do this, and must therefore treat all of Steiner's claims as if they constituted inerrant scripture.  

This seems to be because Steiner was able (at will) to produce in himself - while awake and alert and with full reasoning and memory capacities - a kind of consciousness that perceived the occult world - from which he reported back his observations and interpretations; and nobody else has since been able to do this. Certainly not in the vast volume that Steiner did in his lectures after about 1897, and accelerating until near his death in 1925. 

Because Steiner's followers cannot do what Steiner did to generate his claims, they feel unable to check his claims; and therefore simply take them on trust - regarding them as true because Steiner said them. Steiner discourse is therefore closely analogous to 'fundamentalist' Protestants in terms of Anthroposophists citing their scripture, and argument proceeds by proof-texting - by trading quotes and citations. 

For reasons that I set out in the post earlier today; I believe there is another and practical way of checking Steiner's claims; which can be done by anyone serious about understanding what is valid in Steiner, and using methods that Steiner recommended as the best and himself practiced. 

And that 'method' is simply by reading Steiner in the spirit of direct-knowing, of heart-thinking. 

Instead of trying to replicate Steiner's method of observing the hidden spirit world by inner perception; the reader tests Steiner's claims by intuitive means. 

Whenever a claim of Steiner's fails to be sustained by heart-thinking, whenever his premises or a line of argument is unsupported by the direct-knowing of our deepest thinking - then it is rejected as untrue. 

In other words; we accept from Steiner only that which is specifically sustained and confirmed by our own deepest-possible intuitive responses. 

This, I repeat, is exactly what Steiner recommended in those works of his that he regarded as his most important (specifically The Philosophy of Freedom, which he repeated many times was his fundamental publication). 

Therefore, we can - and in a viable and valid fashion - refute the mass of Steiner, and filter-out from the nonsense that which we most need and could benefit from. 

Refuting Rudolf Steiner's innumerable specific claims - the example of Owen Barfield

Of all the important thinkers of the twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner is perhaps the most difficult to come to grips with. For the unprepared reader, his work presents a series of daunting obstacles. 

To begin with, there is the style, which is formidably abstract, and as unappetizing as dry toast. But a determined reader could learn to put up with that.

The real problem lies with the content, which is often so outlandish and bizarre that the reader suspects either a hoax or a confidence trick. 

Books like Cosmic Memory, with its account of Atlantis and Lemuria, seem to belong on the same shelf as titles like Our Hollow Earth, or My trip to Venus in a Flying Saucer. 

The resulting sense of frustration is likely to cause even the most open-minded reader to give up in disgust.

The first paragraph of Rudolf Steiner, by Colin Wilson, 1985.

*

The Big Problem with Rudolf Steiner (as I have said many times) is that most of what he said and wrote was wrong; but some of what he wrote is sufficient to establish him as one of a handful of the most vital thinkers of the past couple of centuries. 

But because most of Steiner (a very high percentage!) is wrong; on the one hand, most people reject his work outright; while on the other hand, Steiner's disciples and followers (mostly in the Anthroposophical Society, which he founded) are mostly wrong in what they believe - to the point that they miss the significance and importance of what he was right about.  

What Steiner needs, therefore, is scholars who will take was is good and leave aside what is not; and the closest we have to this is Owen Barfield who, in addition, added much of value to what he took from Steiner. 

But even Barfield seems to have been unable to be clear about the nature of Steiner's work, and respected him to the point that he never (that I have seen) denied anything that Steiner ever said. What Barfield instead did was - in his writings - focus on the aspects of Steiner about which he was most sure; and said little or nothing about the colossal number of claims that Steiner made about... everything under the sun, and indeed from many ages before the sun. 

Barfield always recommended Steiner's earliest philosophical books; but did not make clear to the putative reader that most of Steiner's later books will strike most people as simply absurd, and obviously false. 

My understanding is that the major problem for those who regard Steiner as important, and who accept his core analysis and teachings; cannot find grounds from within this teachings for rejecting anything that Steiner ever said or wrote. 

Steiner purports do be doing a spiritual science; and repeatedly emphasizes that anyone can test his claims for themselves by spiritual investigation - yet, in practice, it seems that nobody ever feels able to do this, and must therefore treat all of Steiner's claims as if they constituted inerrant scripture.  

This seems to be because Steiner was able (at will) to produce in himself - while awake and alert and with full reasoning and memory capacities - a kind of consciousness that perceived the occult world - from which he reported back his observations and interpretations; and nobody else has since been able to do this. Certainly not in the vast volume that Steiner did in his lectures after about 1897, and accelerating until near his death in 1925. 

Because Steiner's followers cannot do what Steiner did to generate his claims, they feel unable to check his claims; and therefore simply take them on trust - regarding them as true because Steiner said them. Steiner discourse is therefore closely analogous to 'fundamentalist' Protestants in terms of Anthroposophists citing their scripture, and argument proceeds by proof-texting - by trading quotes and citations. 

For reasons that I set out in the post earlier today; I believe there is another and practical way of checking Steiner's claims; which can be done by anyone serious about understanding what is valid in Steiner, and using methods that Steiner recommended as the best and himself practiced. 

And that 'method' is simply by reading Steiner in the spirit of direct-knowing, of heart-thinking. 

Instead of trying to replicate Steiner's method of observing the hidden spirit world by inner perception; the reader tests Steiner's claims by intuitive means. 

Whenever a claim of Steiner's fails to be sustained by heart-thinking, whenever his premises or a line of argument is unsupported by the direct-knowing of our deepest thinking - then it is rejected as untrue. 

In other words; we accept from Steiner only that which is specifically sustained and confirmed by our own deepest-possible intuitive responses. 

This, I repeat, is exactly what Steiner recommended in those works of his that he regarded as his most important (specifically The Philosophy of Freedom, which he repeated many times was his fundamental publication). 

Therefore, we can - and in a viable and valid fashion - refute the mass of Steiner, and filter-out from the nonsense that which we most need and could benefit from. 

Rudolf Steiner's understanding of the spiritual world

I am re-reading Colin Wilson's excellent book about Rudolf Steiner: the man and his vision (1985) - which he opens by saying that Steiner's core assumption is twofold: that there is a super-sensible, spiritual world hidden 'behind' the everyday world of the senses - and from-which the perceived world is derived. And secondly; that thus world is knowable by those who choose to develop their latent abilities. 

So far, this is hardly distinctive; except that the way in which the hidden ('occult') world was discovered was not by trance, dream or other 'hallucinatory'-state but by an intensification of the alert, awake, clear thinking that Steiner regarded as characteristic of science.

Steiner therefore called his practice a Spiritual Science (and the specific type of spiritual science he recommended, he termed Anthroposophy).

But when we are told of a spiritual world behind the perceptual world; this naturally seems to evoke a picture in our minds of two perceptual worlds. 

In other words, we often imagine the surface everyday world of solid-things, then - separated from it by a barrier - another world of spirit-things. 

When we imagine ourselves knowing the spiritual world, therefore we imagine seeing/ hearing/ touching the spiritual world by something like of an extra set of new senses.  

At times, especially in his later career as a leader in the Theosophical Society then originator of Anthroposophy; Steiner writes exactly like that about his own experiences. 

He describes observing, in an inward fashion, the activities of spiritual beings such as the so-called-dead or angels, on planes of reality not perceptible to the senses. 

Steiner describes (what seems like) observing events of the life of Jesus, or the evolution - and re-incarnation - of the earth; and/or the history of reality in 'Akashic' records that sound like scrolls recording everything that ever happened, but which can be seen and read by inner sight.  

This seems exactly like traditional religious experiences of a 'hallucinatory type'; seeing visions, hearing voices, perceiving other times and places... But with the difference that Steiner had these experiences - not in the context of a trance or dream or religious ecstasy, but in everyday waking consciousness.    

But at other times, Steiner seems to be clear that the understanding of supersensible reality comes by direct understanding, into the realm of thinking; and therefore Not by means of observing inner perceptions with new inner senses. 

(This is the message of his early books Science and Knowledge, and The Philosophy of Freedom.) 

This is what I have variously termed primary thinking, heart-thinking, or direct-knowing; and is a type of intuition. 

It is envisaged as learning without the intermediary of first perceiving some kind of representation like a picture, and then needing to understand what one has perceived. But with direct-knowing, instead the understanding comes into our thinking without mediation - the subjective experience is that knowledge simply 'arises' in our thinking.  

Such a mode of direct and unmediated knowing, is a much rarer and historically more distinctive way of penetrating to the hidden world of the spirit. 

My conclusion is that Steiner did both: Sometimes he perceived the hidden world of spirit with inner vision: Other times he knew the hidden world directly, in thinking. 

But he failed always to be clear about which he had done, and about which was the better mode of knowing.  

Of these; direct-knowing is the more fundamental and potentially valid way of understanding the hidden spiritual world; because any form of inner vision must entail the further step of interpreting its meaning. 

Whereas (by my understanding - not Steiner's) the perceiving mode provides a very high volume of potentially very specific information - but its validity is much less than direct knowing. 

Because this kind of perceptual information can be 'manufactured' by learnable techniques of meditation, and produced almost at will by those with aptitude. Yet, at the level of specific detail, each such 'visionary' will produce his or her own unique and unreplicable description from observing the hidden world - as can be seen from comparing (say) Swedenborg, Blavatsky and Steiner; or the various New Age channelers of the late 20th century.

(Although Steiner seems to have copied then modified a great deal of Blavatsky's general descriptive scheme of metaphysics and history.)    

To avoid confusion; we would need to avoid talking about the super-sensible world in ways that conjure up an inner world of pictures, stories, observed beings. 

We would need to cease talking about experiences such as watching the work of angels, reading the Akashic records, hearing the words of spiritual guides and the like, feeling our hands driven to engage in automatic writing - and other similar things.  

In sum: There is a hidden spiritual world, and it can be known; but it is ultimately known-by-knowing, therefore not known by (yet another) layer of perceiving.