“And the world became a riddle…”

One of Rudolf Steiner’s greatest hopes was that his work be understood. To a large extent this hope went unfulfilled during his lifetime. Since then, aspects of his work have been taken up by various groups and individuals. Some, like Biodynamic farming and Waldorf education have become an accepted part of modern society. But have we begun to come to an understanding of Steiner’s work? I think he was and remains one of the most misunderstood figures of modern times—by friend and foe alike.

We can better understand Steiner’s work when we begin to understand his life. The former is the expression of the latter. If we don’t allow ourselves to be completely absorbed by what Steiner said—the maya of anthroposophy—but can move through the “veil” to an experience of the tensile character of his thinking and begin to recognize how this changes throughout the course of his life, we can begin to get a deeper sense of the path he travelled and then described. His own inner changing, the self-willed transformation of his soul comes to expression in the evolution of anthroposophy.

Perhaps the most dramatic transformation in his life took place in the years following the publication of 'Philosophy of Freedom' and his articulation of anthroposophy as a path towards a conscious experienced understanding of the spiritual. Over the course of these fourteen years that bridge the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Rudolf Steiner went from being a little known private scholar with literary ambitions to being the acknowledged esoteric leader of a new spiritual movement.

At the beginning of this period is an experience, which, as Steiner indicated, changed his life. What was it? The discovery of the sense world. We know he was aware of the sense world earlier. He explores the role of the percept in thinking at length in the Philosophy of Freedom. This new discovery of the sense world has a different dimension to it. Steiner alludes to this in his autobiography: “I found in the sense world something about which no spiritual philosophy had anything to say.” (1)

What exactly did he find? This is a bit of a riddle. He never really says. Nor does he tell us just where or how this new and deeply moving encounter with the sense world occurred. Was it an awareness that dawned over time? Did it happen in a single moment? Knowing Steiner’s path, it was very likely a bit of both: a state of inner readiness, a momentary encounter, followed by an intentional practice—in this case the practice of thought-free sensing: pure unprejudiced observation.

The result of this encounter was a change both in Rudolf Steiner’s inner life and in his relation to the world around him. It also, in his words, “shed light on the spiritual realm.” (2) It was in relation to this experience that Rudolf Steiner writes for the first and only time in his autobiography of meditation saying that in living into the contrast between the soul/spiritual activities of sense-free thinking and thought-free sensing, his “soul life had reached a stage where meditation became a necessity, just as an organism, at a certain stage of evolution, needs to breathe through (3) lungs.” (4) Accompanying it was a deep desire to “experience life’s mysteries,” not merely grasp them theoretically. (5)

These inner changes came to expression in changes to Steiner’s outer life situation. He left the scholarly world of the Goethe-Schiller Archives and moved to Berlin. He began to take on responsibility, to place himself, as it were, on the line. He plunged into the social and intellectual upheaval of his time, adding his own individual and oft controversial voice to the contemporary choir of creativity and change. He accepted a teaching position at the Workers College; he became active in the Giordano Bruno Society, the Free Literary Society and Die Kommenden. He married the woman with whom he had lived for several years. In this period of inner change that accompanies his new discovery of the sense world, Steiner becomes for the first time in his life an active participant in the world around him.

The entire body of his esoteric work follows. The seed of what we know as anthroposophy only began to grow when it was able to sink its roots into the reality of earthly encounter, into the realm of karma, into the will-reality of the sense world. In 1912, when Rudolf Steiner first spoke explicitly of anthroposophy, he characterized it as a path to the spirit through the senses.

What I encounter in the sense world, the things that make an impression on my soul and that live on within me, shape me and give me the opportunity to become myself. Towards the end of his life, Rudolf Steiner wrote about this relationship in the following manner: “Man’s destiny comes to meet him from the world that he knows through his senses. If he can become aware of his own activity in the working of his destiny, his real self rises up before him not only out of his inner being but out of the sense-world too.” (6) There is nothing abstract in this statement. Rudolf Steiner is speaking directly out of his own experience. It is myself that I find in the world that comes to meet me when I turn my senses outward, looking, listening, sensing. This is not the conscious, reflective self, the worried self, the strategic self: it is the self of the will, the sculpting self, the shaping self. This self is present among the multitude of activities that lie beyond the veil of the percept. If I am to find my self, I must turn towards the world, I must not think of myself, of my own comfort or desires. These are for the self what the percept is for the sense-world: maya or illusion. Attachment to them traps the self within the narrow limitations of its own conception of itself. One becomes self-centered and in doing so, blind to the self at work in the world around one. One loses the connection to the forces of one’s own karma. One is cut off from oneself.

Today, it seems essential from a spiritual perspective to become aware of this dilemma. Much of what we have become accustomed to in the fast paced virtual world of what is becoming an increasingly digitalized society exacerbates the problem. If we don’t become conscious of the sculptural, reciprocal relationship between the forces of the self in the world and the forces of the self in the soul, we can very easily find ourselves trapped in an illusion, trying to navigate our lives guided by extrinsic markers: wealth, social acceptance, etc., or other people’s teachings and values. One becomes increasingly concerned with the opinion of one’s social surroundings and finds guidance in its accepted values and habits. These replace one’s own inner sense of direction and in the long run leave the soul empty, cut off from the source of its inner vitality. Losing the sense world means losing oneself.

For Rudolf Steiner, the discovery of the sense world placed him in a relation to his destiny, which made the development of anthroposophy first possible.

Jon McAlice (jmcalice@sonic.net) is a freelance designer and consultant, focusing on the creative use of time and space. A co-founder of the Center for Contextual Studies, his research in contemporary education (contextualization, the experience of meaning, the role of self-directed activity in learning) has aided the growing recognition of the significance of direct experience in the learning process. Jon is author of Engaged Community: the Challenge of Self-Governance in Waldorf Education.

1 Steiner, Rudolf. Autobiography. p. 163

2 Ibid., p. 164

3 x

4 Ibid., p. 166

5 Ibid., p. 164

6 Steiner, Rudolf. Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts: “Understanding of the Spirit; Conscious Experience of Destiny.” p. 39