Anthroposophy: a radical alternative view

New article name is Anthroposophy: a radical alternative view
Rudolf Steiner lamented in Awakening to Community (lecture three, Feb. 6th, 1923), on the consequences of failing (which has happened) to properly take up The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (or Freedom): "The way it should be read is with attention to the fact that it brings one to a wholly different way of thinking and willing and looking at things....The trouble is that The Philosophy of Freedom has not been read in the different way I have been describing. That is the point, and a point that must be sharply stressed if the development of the Anthroposophical Society is not to fall far behind that of anthroposophy itself. If it does fall behind, anthroposophy's conveyance through the Society will result in its being completely misunderstood, and its only fruit will be endless conflict!""
He also wrote in Occult Science: an Outline: The path that leads to sense-free thinking by way of the communications of spiritual science is thoroughly reliable and sure. There is however another that is even more sure, and above all more exact '; at the same time, it is for many people more difficult. The path in question is set forth in my books The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. These books tell what man's thinking can achieve when directed not to impressions that come from the outer world of the physical sense but solely upon itself. When this is so, we have within us no longer the kind of thinking that concerns itself merely with memories of the things of the sense; we have instead pure thinking which is like a being that has life within itself. In the above mentioned books you will find nothing at all that is derived from the communications of spiritual science. They testify to the fact that pure thinking, working within itself alone, can throw light on the great questions of life - questions concerning the universe and man. The books thus occupy a significant intermediate position between knowledge of the sense-world and knowledge of the spiritual world. What they offer is what thinking can attain when it rises above sense-observation, yet still holds back from entering upon the spiritual, supersensible research. One who wholeheartedly pursues the train of thought indicated in these books is already in the spiritual world; only it makes itself known to him as a thought-world. Whoever feels ready to enter upon this intermediate path of development will be taking a safe and sure road, and it will leave with him a feeling in regard to the higher world that will bear rich fruit in all time to come.
When the above indications of Rudolf Steiner are understood <u>in practice</u>, it will then be clear that Anthroposophy is not, as the main entry suggests: a spiritual philosophy , but rather a human capacity latent in all human beings for which the books on the problem of knowledge are: A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, Truth and Knowledge, and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. These are the guides (maps) to the manifestation (the territory). Again: Anthroposophy is not a point of view (a spiritual philosophy), but an action. It is a method, not a content. It is learned from a diligent study of the above three books, in order, and sentence by sentence, whereby each early idea is to become experience, before the later ideas can even be properly understood. Anthroposophy is how you do something, not a what. Anthroposophy has no content, being an action, anymore than the verb "run" has a content.
The failure to appreciate this important though subtle matter has nearly ruined Steiner's life's work and true legacy.
Here is some Emerson pointing in the direction of the consequences of this failure to understand what Anthroposophy actually is, from Emerson's lecture at Harvard in 1837, called The American Scholar: Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they - let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good and fair.
The path to Emerson's "active soul" is laid out in Steiner's three books on the problem of knowledge listed above. This brief article was written by Joel A. Wendt

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