The Apostle of the Twentieth Century

"Since I entered this world with defined soul-predispositions, and since the course of my life, as it comes to expression in my biography, is determined by these predispositions, I must, as spiritual man, have existed before my birth. I must, as spiritual being, be the repetition of someone through whose biography mine can be explained, (for) in each life the human spirit appears as a repetition of itself with the fruits of its former experiences in previous lives." 

From Rudolf Steiner, An Autobiography 

Rudolf Steiner constitutes one of the great enigmas of our time. Enigmatic to those who worshipped his every word and followed his every movement; enigmatic to those who considered him a dark mystery man speaking of strange truths and unfounded ancient wisdom. To the rest of the world, in his time and now, he was and remains an obscure and unknown figure. Yet, the power of this man to draw attention and produce a significant following of adherents as well as enemies in the first quarter of this century cannot, and should not, be overlooked or ignored as we near the millennial event of our entry into the twenty-first century. For behind the enigma expressed so fluently in thousands of compelling lectures and written works conveyed across Europe over the course of these first twenty-five years lies a deep truth and a deep secret to this day. To unlock the secret behind Rudolf Steiner, and reveal this man for who he was, and is, requires a key – a key that he, himself, provided in the very form that constituted all his work; the form known as ‘paradox’.  

Our challenge today is to unlock the secret behind the enigma and paradox that constitutes “Who Was Rudolf Steiner” with a key of our own – the desire to understand ourselves, the world we live in, and the universe that we all reside in as citizens of the cosmos. The legacy left by Rudolf Steiner coupled with a desire that must burn within our hearts and minds to know the truth provides the means to this understanding. Let the clarion call of “And ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free” forcefully carry us into the future. 

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) literally left us with the fount of truth concerning the human race on earth and its place in this vast cosmic puzzle called life when he died. Over the course of his life he walked a singular path that sought to encompass the world in the grasp of knowledge. Born in a small village nestled on the Austrian border to Hungary he grew up in the picture-perfect setting required for a budding thinker to collect his thoughts in the constant wonder and contemplation of his surroundings. Blessed with the opportunity to grow up in a free-thinking household where religious fervor and its attending doctrines and dogmas was conspicuously absent, Rudolf was free to fully explore his world with the childlike naivety reminiscent of a faculty possessed in much earlier times of human history. 

As he grew into adolescence he retained this faculty in his head as a kind of projective geometry that served to coordinate the boundary between the three dimensional world of sense impressions and their effective representation in solid appearing forms, and a world of non-material and invisible representation. He would later refer to this faculty in many detailed descriptions as atavistic clairvoyance; the common form of perception held by people of ancient ancestral times before the power of thinking arose in its first formative development with the Greek age. He soon became aware that he alone appeared to have retained this faculty of the ancients – this clairvoyant perception of a higher dimensional realm. Alas, he dismayed that he would never be able to convey his thoughts and feelings about this world to those around him. Yet, he was able to think into the world with remarkable clarity in terms of the classical Aristotelian world representation comprised of three realms of efficient causation, thus giving him a boundless world of outward nature to wonder about and contemplate over. 

Rudolf's father, a railway telegrapher, and later, a stationmaster near Vienna wanted him to gain a technical education that would eventually prepare him to become a railway engineer. Thus was established the basis for the curricular pursuits that developed a growing affiliation with mathematics and the natural sciences of biology, chemistry, and physics. Difficulty with these subjects, though, forced Rudolf to ask the fundamental question upon which rests all of his forthcoming achievements: "On what foundation can these subjects be made understandable?" The answer to this question, and the solution to his problems of learning, came with the realization that only through thinking, and the active engagement of thought in the process of learning and understanding, can the inner workings and deeper secrets of nature be grasped with surety and clarity. Principal to this developing confidence in thinking, and the process of reasoning in the shaping of knowledge, were the works of the philosophers of his era and heritage; the idealists, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. These thinkers provided a formative force for what would later comprise his own foundation for truth and knowledge. 

The move of the family to Inzersdorf, near Vienna, where Rudolf’s father became Stationmaster, proved to be the prophetic turning-point to the future course of a life that would soon be thrown into turmoil; a turmoil so profound that only the saving grace of a chance encounter could stem the tide of what would be an overwhelming, and temporarily destructive, revelation. As a new student at the Technical University Rudolf took the train into Vienna every day in order to attend classes toward his goal of becoming a schoolmaster. His formidable coursework included mathematics, the natural sciences, history, and literature. As he traveled each day into the city he wondered if, and how, he would ever be able to express this ability to perceive and know the supersensible realms that underlay outward manifestation in his studies and life experience. It was on this train one day that he met a man who provided the first avenue of affiliation with this type of perception. 

Felix Kogutski was a man who seemed to live in an earlier time; a time in which the knowing truths of the folk-soul of his heritage remained resident in perception throughout the life experience. Born in 1833 he grew up with a deep feeling for nature and her elementary secrets that never subsided as he reached adulthood. His simple manner and naïve demeanor masked a profound inner knowledge that served his profession of gathering herbs having medicinal value and selling them to the various apothecaries in Vienna. Rudolf Steiner realized immediately that here was someone who could understand his view of the world. 

In their sustained conversations and meetings it soon became apparent that this man, Felix the herb gatherer, beheld a vast experiential reservoir of esoteric wisdom that circulated around the knowledge of the elementary spirits found resident in the kingdoms of nature; the beings behind the fairy-tales handed down from generation to generation. This simple man, seeming to exist entirely outside the contemporary culture of late nineteenth century Vienna, would prove to be an instrumental influence for Rudolf’s developing conception of the world and the knowledge attainable therein. 

Lecture courses in German literature given by Professor Karl Schroer proved to demonstrate Rudolf’s keen aesthetic sense, and a particular affinity with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the veritable icon of European literary accomplishment. Schroer detected that this young man of 21 was ideally suited to edit the little known fourteen volumes of natural-scientific writings that Goethe compiled over the years until his death in 1832. Thus was established the first great opportunity in Steiner’s career to begin to develop the perceptive knowledge that he held vouchsafe within toward a new theory of cognition based on the Goethean world view. By 1886, as a result of his efforts with Goethe and an extraordinarily active social life of intellectual discussions with friends and acquaintances he made in the spirit of dialectics and the free exchange of ideas, he was convinced that thinking, unfettered by prejudice and assumption, could be a sure and clear path to higher knowledge itself, beyond sense perception. This conviction led to the formulation of his main philosophical work, The Philosophy of Freedom, and was prefaced by his doctoral dissertation, Truth and Knowledge, which proposed the need for “an epistemology free of assumptions” as the method necessary to extend beyond Immanuel Kant’s sense-bound logical knowledge of a material world alone. 

From 1890-1897 Rudolf Steiner was commissioned to work at the Goethe Archives at Weimar in order to gather, research, and catalog Goethe’s many unpublished works pertaining to natural science. It was here that he produced his seminal work, Goethe’s World Conception, wherein the process of metamorphosis was seen to be an activity of soul-spiritual development involving the Law of Intensification. He saw that this law took the form of concentration in the soul’s present evolutionary advancement of the faculty of thinking. With the end of his Weimar period came the opportunity to edit the avant-garde Magazine for Literature in Berlin. His profound disappointment with the reception to his Philosophy of Freedom by the academic and intellectual circles in Germany necessitated another setback to fostering his true aim of contributing Objective Idealism to the heritage of German idealist philosophy. It was in this magazine that he published his first esoterically-oriented article, Goethe’s Secret Revelation on August 26, 1899. Based on an original interpretation of Goethe’s classic fairy-tale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, it served to showcase Rudolf’s keen spiritual insights to the sector of society capable of appreciating his remarkable gift for supersensible perception. 

Recognition now came quickly as requests to lecture before the Giordano Bruno Society on Bruno’s Significance to Modern Rome, and before the Theosophical Society regarding Christianity and the Mysteries of Antiquity played to enthusiastic audiences. With his lecture series Eleven European Mystics, given in 1902, came the profound revelation that these mystics who ushered in the Renaissance period of the fifteen century all professed one common and singular inspiration. For what motivated and inspired Meister Eckhart, Paracelsus, Jacob Bohme, Giordano Bruno, and the other remarkable individuals described, was the living presence of the Christ Impulse, and the need for this impulse to be re-established for the future evolution of the world and man. 

In 1904, the magazine Lucifer was developed to serialize important thought pieces, such as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, An Introduction to Theosophy, and Of The Akashic Chronicle – Atlantis and Lemuria. By this time Steiner had become president of the German Section of the Theosophical Society with complete freedom to espouse the true theosophy that would later be known as anthroposophy. A comprehensive set of eighteen lectures on Esoteric Cosmology given in Paris in 1906, and courses on The Theosophy of the Rosicrucian in 1907 established the groundwork for his esoteric masterpiece Outline of Occult Science, published in 1910. Herein was formulated the little known, but influential system first developed by the European esoteric circle of the Rosicrucians in the thirteenth century under the guidance of Christian Rosenkreutz. Steiner was able to confirm through his own esoteric development that a medium for inquiring into the eternal record of truth regarding the past, present, and future actually existed. Known by the Rosicrucians of old as the imperishable Akashic Chronicle it served to demonstrate these remarkable individudals and their movement as representing the work of the first true scientists of the spirit. Steiner was able to extend his vision into this realm to such a degree that research results were obtainable with sufficient clarity for dissemination to the intellect. 

One of the utmost needs expressed by the members at this time was for a new interpretation of the Christian Gospels, Book of Revelation, and other Biblical documents according to this method of spiritual-scientific research. Thus began a remarkable series of lecture courses designed to reveal the Gospels of the New Testament, and their integral relationship to the books of the Old Testament, as comprising spiritual-scientific documents serving to convey the facts of an organized system of spiritual evolution involving mankind as the central principle in a developmental scheme governed by The Logos of the Word of God. All told, this contribution to Christian theological reformation clearly stands as the most significant and relatively unheralded achievement since Martin Luther’s work in the sixteenth century. 

The culmination of Rudolf Steiner’s Christological period occurred in 1913 with the presentation of his synthetical masterpiece of esoteric Christianity, The Fifth Gospel, wherein the Akashic Chronicle is accessed to reveal the wholly miraculous nature of the life and destiny of the Christ Being for earthly and human evolution. The content of these lectures and the inner struggle required to reveal them fully thus served to form the foundation stone that inaugurated the site of the first Goetheanum at the inception of the General Anthroposophical Society. This Fifth Gospel would begin to permeate itself into the conscious life of the members of the newly founded society as the necessary first preparation for a great unfolding event destined to occur in the near future. Thus began the light and life of Anthroposophy out of the dark shadows and surreptitious influences that prevailed within the theosophical movement and its band of adherents. Rudolf Steiner would personally oversee every detail of the construction of this worthy house of the spirit. Completed in 1918 through the efforts of an international community of anthroposophical workers it stood as the living embodiment of the majesty of spirit on earth. But storm clouds were brewing on the horizon.  

A critical turning point had already begun in the fall of 1917 when Rudolf Steiner expressed himself with uncharacteristic gravity and utmost solemnity in a lecture cycle entitled The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness; for herein contained was the definitive description of a process of descent that had been taking place since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and would henceforth begin to take hold of mankind with destructive consequences. Already evident since 1914 these spirits would seek to exact an apocalypse of karmic dimensions wrought on the stage of the Gentile times. In these lectures Steiner wrestled with a prophetic vision of horrific proportions and sought to mobilize the forces of the members toward positive actions that might stem the tide of these impending events. Also evident was the extent to which the members solely relied on this man for their well being; a dependence that had to stop. 

Rudolf Steiner’s objectives were now set on establishing practical methods based on will, effort, and spirit-filled aspiration toward achieving an objective idealism on earth. Principle among these objectives was the forming and realization of a social organism having its basis in the Living Trinity of Divine Powers expressed as Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In the aftermath of World War I he sought, with ever increasing purpose, to spread the utter necessity of establishing the concept of threefoldness as the only solution to the prevailing dualism and polarizing influences of the opposing powers that were seeking to drive the people and the nations apart. 

Another deep concern in 1919 was the need for establishing principles of education that would rightly serve the proper growth and development of the child through the first three developmental stages of life – the so-called educational epochs. Fundamental to its success would be the need for teachers trained in the methods appropriate for instructing the child at each of these three stages. Thus was born the Waldorf School movement for educational reform based on spiritual-scientific knowledge of the essential needs of the child in these critically important development cycles. 

Rudolf Steiner also made significant contributions in the fields of medicine and agriculture designed to exploit spiritual-scientific principles for the enhancement of human health and well-being. All of these practical plans and efforts were designed to serve the establishment of a conscientious world community where human endeavors would be imbued with the divine spirit to be found in all spheres of life. 

On the night of December 31, 1922, the Goetheanum was burned to the ground. This devastating blow only served to galvanize Rudolf Steiner’s resolve to build a new Goetheanum and rebuild the General Anthroposophical Society along the lines of a Michael/Christ Impulse that would serve to mobilize the members anew to ‘wield the sword of meteoric iron’ in the battle against the mythological dragon of evil. A year later, before a faithful gathering of the remaining members who appeared, Rudolf Steiner performed a re-christening of the society along new lines of organization and commitment designed to prepare for a Cosmic Turning Point Of Time. 

As the year of 1924 proceeded, Rudolf Steiner was committed to formulating and conveying his growing vision of the future course of Anthroposophy as a living entity guided out of the inspired goals and initiatives of the members themselves. In a monumental cycle of lectures contained in the eight volumes of The Karmic Relationships he describes the intent of the Christmas Conference for the refounding of the society as an act of initiation for the future. These lectures also convey his attainment of the faculty of modern exact clairvoyance at the highest degree possible for the description of the spiritual destinies and individual karma associated with key historical personalities. The demands of work, along with attending to the needs of the individual members, finally took their toll on his highly expended etheric body and he fell ill with a stomach disorder in September of 1924 and was forced to curtail all activity. His final lecture, given on September 28th of that year, was the last of the 5,965 he gave in a public career spanning the entire first quarter of the twentieth century. 

As he rested and recovered, his enthusiasm grew in preparation for the upcoming Christmas Foundation Meeting and his active participation. Sadly, he fell ill on January 1, 1925, and died three months later. He was 64 years old. On December 29, 1925, the outside association formed to govern the General Anthroposophical Society effectively moved its headquarters from Dornach, Switzerland back to Germany. Rudolf Steiner’s legacy rests firmly on the Foundation Stone he laid during Christmas week of 1923 when he invoked the secret power contained within the Dodecahedral Meditation in order to establish the true form of the anthroposophical movement according to the will and initiative of the members themselves and their goals for conscious efforts of spiritual attainment. Let the future course of anthroposophy be an earnest striving for the knowledge of the reality behind the stone and its great purpose for being laid into the hearts, minds, and souls of those who must now take up the mantle of Rudolf Steiner and wield Michaels’s sword of meteoric iron with the courage to know the truth that will make us free.