Rudolf Steiner

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

A divine-spiritual world with hierarchies of beings and a cosmic Christ

Both personal and impersonalInferred from their doctrine

Steiner hardly uses the word God in the abstract. In The Philosophy of Freedom he defends a monism that needs no lawgiver outside the world. In his anthroposophical period he describes, in An Outline of Esoteric Science, a divine-spiritual world populated by hierarchies of beings who, through the cosmic phases he calls Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, have guided the evolution of the human being. Within that picture he places a trinity: the paternal ground of the world, Christ as a cosmic being incarnated in Jesus, whose death at Golgotha he regards as the centre of earthly evolution, and the Spirit. The divine thus has an aspect of universal ground and another of personal beings with whom the human being relates, but both are to be known through spiritual research, not accepted on faith.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

The I is the spiritual core that reincarnates in body, soul and spirit

An evolving soulStated explicitly

In Theosophy, of 1904, Steiner describes the human being as body, soul and spirit, and divides these members into a physical body, an etheric or life body, an astral body and the I, to which are added spiritual members still in germ. The I is the centre: the instance that says I of itself and that no other person can utter for it. This spiritual core is not exhausted in one life; in the chapter on the reincarnation of the spirit and destiny he maintains that it incarnates again, and that the capacities and destiny of each biography are the fruit of earlier lives. Already in The Philosophy of Freedom he had placed individuality in thinking and free action. The true self is not an illusion: it is a spiritual individuality in evolution.

Why do we suffer?

Destiny is the fruit of earlier lives and an organ of the I's development

Karma and the soul's learningStated explicitly

Steiner approaches suffering through karma. In Theosophy he maintains that each person's destiny, including their pains, is the consequence of what their individuality did in earlier lives; and in the lecture cycle Manifestations of Karma, of 1910, he studies how illnesses, accidents and catastrophes relate to spiritual causes. But he insists that karma is neither punishment nor fatalism: the I, before birth, in some way seeks out the circumstances it needs in order to compensate and develop, and pain can become strength and capacity in a future life. In his cosmology, moreover, suffering is inscribed in the evolution of humanity, in which act powers he calls Luciferic and Ahrimanic, which the Christ impulse makes it possible to balance.

What happens after death?

The I passes through the soul world and spirit land before reincarnating

Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

Steiner describes the path after death in the chapter on the three worlds in Theosophy. At death the human being leaves the physical body and, shortly afterwards, the etheric, at which point he beholds his past life as a great tableau. He then passes through the soul world, where he must free himself from desires bound to the physical, a phase he elsewhere calls kamaloka, and enters spirit land, where he works over the fruits of the completed life and prepares the next. Afterwards he incarnates again, according to accumulated karma. In his lectures he developed these stages in detail, as well as the relation between the living and the dead, to whom he recommended reading spiritual texts. Death is neither end nor fusion, but a rhythm in the evolution of the I.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

A path of conscious exercises awakening organs of spiritual perception

Through conscious inner workStated explicitly

Steiner does not speak of salvation in an ecclesiastical sense, but of a development of the human being that each person can freely undertake. In How to Know Higher Worlds and in An Outline of Esoteric Science he describes a path of exercises: reverence, inner calm, a retrospective review of the day, concentration of thought, control of the will, equanimity, unprejudiced openness and meditation on images and phrases, which gradually awaken faculties of spiritual perception he calls imagination, inspiration and intuition. The moral condition is strict: for every step in occult knowledge, three must be taken in the perfection of character. To one's own work he adds the Christ impulse, which he regards as the force that makes the freedom of the I possible in the Earth's evolution, but which does not replace conscious effort.

Is a teacher necessary?

The teacher gives directions, but the modern pupil must test everything by thinking

Helpful but not indispensableStated explicitly

Steiner was for decades the teacher of a large movement and gave personal esoteric instruction to many pupils, but he insisted that the modern path of knowledge does not require blind obedience. In How to Know Higher Worlds he explains that the spiritual teacher can indicate the exercises and conditions, but that the pupil must travel them freely and understand what he is doing; the communications of spiritual research, he adds in other writings, can be examined with sound thinking even before one has verified them by one's own vision. Already in The Philosophy of Freedom he had argued that authentic moral action springs from one's own intuition and not from authority. He therefore recognises the guide's value, but subordinates it to the freedom of the I.

Is the world real?

Physical world, soul world and spirit land, in cosmic evolution

Planes of existenceStated explicitly

In Theosophy, Steiner describes three worlds: the physical, perceived by the senses; the soul world, made of forces of sympathy and antipathy, desires and feelings; and spirit land, where the archetypes of everything that exists reside. The human being belongs to all three through body, soul and spirit. In An Outline of Esoteric Science he adds a temporal dimension: the present world is the fourth phase of a cosmic evolution, preceded by those he calls Saturn, Sun and Moon, in which hierarchies of spiritual beings have gradually formed the cosmos and the human being. The physical world is real and must be studied with the rigour of natural science, which Steiner admired since his work on Goethe, but it is the outer manifestation of spiritual realities accessible to an extended knowledge.

What is love?

The Earth is the cosmos of love; free action is born of love for the deed

Love of God and neighbourStated explicitly

Steiner treats love on two levels. In The Philosophy of Freedom, truly free action proceeds not from duty or authority but from love of the action's object: only when I follow my love for the object am I the one who acts; and the maxim of free human beings is to live in love for the deed and let live in understanding of the other's will. In An Outline of Esoteric Science he gives love a cosmic dimension: the old Moon was the cosmos of wisdom, and the Earth's mission is to become the cosmos of love. In that process he assigns a central role to the Christ impulse, which he regards as the source of a love able to unite human beings without cancelling their individuality. Love is thus both the fruit of freedom and the task of evolution.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Freedom is not given: it is won in pure thinking, within karma

Karma and choiceStated explicitly

The Philosophy of Freedom, of 1894, asks whether the human being is free or determined, and answers that he is neither in advance: he can become free. He is free when he acts moved by moral intuitions he himself grasps through thinking, and not by impulses, habits or others' commands; Steiner calls this view ethical individualism. In his anthroposophical period he adds the law of karma: the circumstances of each life are the consequence of earlier lives, but they do not determine how the I responds to them, which can transform them and, by present action, sow future destiny. In his writings and lectures on karma he insists that it does not contradict freedom: it inherits the starting situation, not the response.

Why meditate or pray?

Meditating to awaken organs that perceive spiritual reality

Seeing reality as it isStated explicitly

Steiner conceives meditation as an instrument of knowledge. In How to Know Higher Worlds and An Outline of Esoteric Science he proposes exercises of concentration on symbolic images and phrases, such as the cross with roses, which strengthen the soul until faculties of spiritual perception awaken in it: imagination, inspiration and intuition. The aim is to see reality as it is, including what the senses do not reach, with the same clarity with which scientific thinking sees nature. Meditation must be practised in full consciousness, without losing the I or falling into trance states, and accompanied by moral work. He also wrote meditative verses for each week of the year in the Calendar of the Soul.

Can reason know the ultimate?

There are no limits to knowledge: thinking can investigate the spiritual

Esoteric knowledgeStated explicitly

Steiner argues expressly with Kant and with those who assert insuperable limits to knowledge. In Truth and Knowledge, in A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception and in The Philosophy of Freedom he holds that knowing is the synthesis of percept and concept, and that thinking, which lies beyond subject and object, grasps reality itself, not a subjective representation of it. From there he takes the step to his spiritual science: if thinking is strengthened through meditative exercises, it can investigate the spiritual worlds with a rigour comparable to that of natural science. He calls this research anthroposophy and maintains that its results, though born of supersensible experience, can be examined with sound thinking.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

Spiritual science must fertilise school, farm, medicine and social order

Engage with the worldStated explicitly

Few spiritual teachers have left so practical a mark as Steiner. From 1919 he applied his spiritual science to almost every field: he founded in Stuttgart the first Waldorf school for the children of workers at a cigarette factory; in 1924 he gave the agriculture course from which biodynamic farming arose; with the physician Ita Wegman he developed anthroposophical medicine and a curative education; and in The Threefold Social Order he proposed a threefolding of the social organism into three autonomous spheres, free spiritual life, egalitarian legal life and fraternal economic life. He warned that there is no panacea for ordering social relations. Inner life is not separated from the world: it must transform it.