rudolf steiner library newsletter: reviews come familiar with them can scarcely avoid beginning to pick up the experience by osmosis.” This is very encouraging, but the next sentence may be harder for the committed anthroposophist to swallow: “This aspect of Steiner’s work is much less widely known than his later work with what he called ‘Anthroposophy,’ a more esoteric enterprise which, important as it is to his followers, has had the effect of taking attention away from other aspects of his work, especially his luminous contribution to understanding Goethe….” Anthroposophy evidently appeared to Bortoft to have been a sideshow for a limited audience, while the real action was elsewhere. Anthroposophy, however, is inclusive rather than exclusive, and there are moments in Taking Appearance Seriously at which a reference to Steiner would have been very much to the point. His succinct statement of the reciprocal relationship between the whole and the part gives a vital human dimension to the discussion of multiplicity in unity: “A healthy social life is found only when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living.” The latter part of the book brings the lessons of the earlier chapters to an extended consideration of the nature and problems of language and meaning. Of particular interest is the insightful discussion of the relationship between what the author puts into a book or a play and what the reader or playgoer gets out of it. In spite of the very frequent occurrence of the pronoun “we,” it seems advisable to take it that Bortoft is speaking out of his own experience of the change in perception brought about by the dynamic approach; but readers who feel that their modes of experience have developed in different ways will still find much that is of value here. Finally, there is a recapitulation of some of the initial thinking in the light of subsequent discussions, including a passage that invites serious consideration of the relationship between Bortoft’s and Steiner’s views of perception. Those of us who have worked with Steiner’s Study of Man will probably remember puzzling over chapter 9, in which Steiner speaks of what Bortoft might have called an upstream/downstream dichotomy—in this case, one that embraces the whole of one’s life: We did not begin living when we entered the menagerie and turned our attention to the lion. This action is linked to our life up to this point, which plays into it too, and what we take out with us when we leave the menagerie will again be carried over into the rest of life. 14 •
being human
If now we consider the whole process, what is the lion first of all? He is first of all a conclusion. That is absolutely true: the lion is a conclusion. A little later, the lion is a judgment. And a little later still, the lion is a concept.
According to Bortoft, in the shift “upstream” from appearance to appearance, we leave behind the subjectobject separation and enter into a “condition in which what manifests is what it is, without any mediation by intervening entities of any kind (images, representations) in consciousness” (italics mine). My suggestion that the juxtaposition of these statements might be a fruitful subject for contemplation is really a microcosm of my response to the main thrust of Taking Appearance Seriously, which is the presentation and development of the concept and art of dynamic seeing. How does Husserl’s phenomenology relate to Goethe’s and Steiner’s, and how widely does the quality of perception vary from one person to another? It is possible that to some people the sight of a dandelion registers merely as a piece of information, while others, who may never have heard of the dynamic approach, experience the inner life of the plant shining out of its glowing petals—a manifestation of its etheric energy. This corresponds to the experience of the young lady studying nettles who gives us the final word of Henri Bortoft’s book. I wouldn’t quarrel with anyone who suggested that this has something to do with the earliest stage of the path of knowledge described in Rudolf Steiner’s Knowledge of Higher Worlds.
More Radiant than the Sun
A Handbook for Working with Steiner’s Meditations and Exercises
By Gertrude Reif Hughes; SteinerBooks, 2013, 97 pages. Review by Sara Ciborski For newcomers to anthroposophy, finding entry into Rudolf Steiner’s indications for meditation can be challenging. They are spread over many lectures and books, are addressed to audiences of varied familiarity with spiritual science, and assume different levels of advancement in inner self-development. Because of this, More Radiant than the Sun is especially important: Gertrude Hughes has carefully selected from Steiner’s wealth of verses and meditations a few that in her lifelong experience as a meditator have proven most fruitful. And the book is timely: as Hughes says in a wonderful introduction, many more people now than at any