Rudolf Steiner at age 35 in 1896 We have now reached the point where we must venture into the great unknown: Steiner the seer, the Initiate.
It is a plain fact that in some form or other spiritual knowledge has existed throughout the ages. Secret wisdom has never been absent from human history. But in Steiner it assumed a totally new form. In order to appreciate this revolutionary novelty, we must first have a picture of the old form.
The faculty of spiritual perception and secret wisdom is obtained through certain organs in the “subtle body” of man, to borrow a convenient term from Eastern Indian medicine. In Sanskrit these organs are called “chakrams,” generally translated into English as “lotus flowers.” They fulfill a function in the “subtle body” similar to our senses in the physical body. They are usually dormant today, but can be awakened. We can disregard for the moment the rites of Initiation which were employed in the mystery temples of the ancient world, and confine ourselves to the survival of more general methods which today are still practiced in many parts of the world. They all have one thing in common: they operate through the vegetative system in man, through bodily posture, through the control of breathing, through physical or mental exercises which work upon the solar plexus and the sympathetic nervous system. I realize that I am presenting a somewhat crude simplification. But nevertheless I am giving the essentials.
Steiner broke with all this. He began to operate from the opposite pole of the human organism, from pure thought. Thought, ordinary human thought, even if it is brilliant and positive, is at first something very weak. It does not possess the life, say, of our breathing, let alone the powerful life of our pulsating blood. It is, shall we say, flat, without substance; it is really lifeless. It is “pale thought,” as Shakespeare called it.
This relative lifelessness of our thoughts is providential, however. If the living thoughts filling the universe were to enter our consciousness just as they are, we would faint. If the living idea in every created thing simply jumped into our consciousness with all its native force, it would blot us out. Fortunately, our cerebro-spinal system exerts a kind of resistance in the process; it functions like a resistor in an electric circuit; it is a sort of transformer, reducing the violence of reality to such a degree that our mind can tolerate it and register it. However, as a result, we see only the shadows of reality on the back wall of our Platonic cave, not reality itself.
Now one of the magic words in Steiner's philosophy with which he attempts to break this spell, is “Erkraftung des Denkens.” It means putting force, life into thinking, through thinking, within thinking. All his basic philosophical works, notably the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, and many of his exercises, are directed to this purpose. If they are followed, sooner or later the moment arrives when thinking becomes leibfrei, i.e. independent of the bodily instrument, when it works itself free from the cerebrospinal system.
This is at first a most disturbing experience. One feels like a man who has pushed off from the shore and who must now strive with might and main to maintain himself in the raging sea. The sheer power of cosmic thought is such that at first one loses one's identity. And perhaps one would lose it for good, if it were not for a fact which now emerges from the hidden mysteries of Christianity. One does not finally lose one's identity because He Himself has walked the waves and extended a helping hand to Peter who ventured out prematurely. Gradually the waves seem to calm down, and a condition ensues which Steiner expresses in a wonderful phrase: “Thinking itself becomes a body which draws into itself as its soul the Spirit of the Universe.”
A Biographical Sketch by Alfred Heidenreich (London, England -- August 1961)
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7/ Part 8 / Part 9
It is a plain fact that in some form or other spiritual knowledge has existed throughout the ages. Secret wisdom has never been absent from human history. But in Steiner it assumed a totally new form. In order to appreciate this revolutionary novelty, we must first have a picture of the old form.
The faculty of spiritual perception and secret wisdom is obtained through certain organs in the “subtle body” of man, to borrow a convenient term from Eastern Indian medicine. In Sanskrit these organs are called “chakrams,” generally translated into English as “lotus flowers.” They fulfill a function in the “subtle body” similar to our senses in the physical body. They are usually dormant today, but can be awakened. We can disregard for the moment the rites of Initiation which were employed in the mystery temples of the ancient world, and confine ourselves to the survival of more general methods which today are still practiced in many parts of the world. They all have one thing in common: they operate through the vegetative system in man, through bodily posture, through the control of breathing, through physical or mental exercises which work upon the solar plexus and the sympathetic nervous system. I realize that I am presenting a somewhat crude simplification. But nevertheless I am giving the essentials.
Steiner broke with all this. He began to operate from the opposite pole of the human organism, from pure thought. Thought, ordinary human thought, even if it is brilliant and positive, is at first something very weak. It does not possess the life, say, of our breathing, let alone the powerful life of our pulsating blood. It is, shall we say, flat, without substance; it is really lifeless. It is “pale thought,” as Shakespeare called it.
This relative lifelessness of our thoughts is providential, however. If the living thoughts filling the universe were to enter our consciousness just as they are, we would faint. If the living idea in every created thing simply jumped into our consciousness with all its native force, it would blot us out. Fortunately, our cerebro-spinal system exerts a kind of resistance in the process; it functions like a resistor in an electric circuit; it is a sort of transformer, reducing the violence of reality to such a degree that our mind can tolerate it and register it. However, as a result, we see only the shadows of reality on the back wall of our Platonic cave, not reality itself.
Now one of the magic words in Steiner's philosophy with which he attempts to break this spell, is “Erkraftung des Denkens.” It means putting force, life into thinking, through thinking, within thinking. All his basic philosophical works, notably the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, and many of his exercises, are directed to this purpose. If they are followed, sooner or later the moment arrives when thinking becomes leibfrei, i.e. independent of the bodily instrument, when it works itself free from the cerebrospinal system.
This is at first a most disturbing experience. One feels like a man who has pushed off from the shore and who must now strive with might and main to maintain himself in the raging sea. The sheer power of cosmic thought is such that at first one loses one's identity. And perhaps one would lose it for good, if it were not for a fact which now emerges from the hidden mysteries of Christianity. One does not finally lose one's identity because He Himself has walked the waves and extended a helping hand to Peter who ventured out prematurely. Gradually the waves seem to calm down, and a condition ensues which Steiner expresses in a wonderful phrase: “Thinking itself becomes a body which draws into itself as its soul the Spirit of the Universe.”
A Biographical Sketch by Alfred Heidenreich (London, England -- August 1961)
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7/ Part 8 / Part 9
