I introduced Torkom Saraydarian and showed a sample of his work. Torkom also was a gifted musician and produced many CDs. I also wrote that there are many other spiritual teachers who are not well known and may be apparently ahead of their time.
There lived another man by the name of Rudolf Steiner. He lived Austria, Germany, and Switzerland from 1861 to 1925. When I first read his books I was immediately impressed with his understanding of both the physical and spiritual worlds. In addition to the vast knowledge his way with words moved me.
He certainly can expand our mental rings beyond belief. He will show us where our rings are too constricted. Thinking is our link with the spiritual world so we need to expand our thinking – expand our rings.
Whether we are philosophers, scientists, artists, teachers, or students he adds insights and new perspectives to our craft. I cannot begin to provide a complete description of this man.
There is a website www.rsarchives.org that contains information about him and much more. Many of his books are and lectures are accessible as well.
Here are a few statements about him found on the site (in italics).
RUDOLF STEINER, philosopher, scientist and educator, (1861–1925), has achieved world-wide fame as the originator of the Science of the Spirit known as Anthroposophy, and as a pioneer of genius in a variety of fields of learning.
“Steiner’s gift to the world was a moral and meditative way to objective vision, a way appropriate to the psychological and physiological constitution of Western man. If accepted in the spirit of humility, altruism and truthfulness in which it was given, it could bridge the existing cleft between a man’s religious conviction and his intellect and will. It could add comprehension to our existing knowledge and thus revive the vision without which our generation will hardly find the solution to its problems.”
Franz Winkler, M.D., Man the Bridge between Two Worlds.
In Rudolf Steiner-An Introduction to His Life and Thought
By Olin D. Wannamaker
The death of this Austrian thinker in the Swiss countryside near Basel, in March 1925, brought to an end a career of intense and varied intellectual and spiritual activities whose vital influence on contemporary culture was already manifest and seems obviously destined to permanent and profound significance. When a single individual, after spending years in the comprehensive study of philosophy and the sciences as well as literature and the arts, after having produced a number of volumes of a penetrating philosophical character and deeply spiritual import, applies his thought effectually to the creation of a new type of architecture, a new therapy engaging the active interest of numbers of highly trained medical men, radically new conceptions and methods in agriculture, fundamentally new and challenging ideas regarding the social order, and a school numbering a thousand pupils based upon an entirely novel departure from current pedagogy and attracting widespread favorable interest, such a person must embody unique human traits.
These tangible manifestations of the genius of Rudolf Steiner in the spheres of medicine, art, education, agriculture, and the social order become the more impressive when we trace them back to the soil out of which they grew — to his deeply spiritual philosophy. To state the elements of that philosophy at the beginning of this sketch seems almost to contradict the spirit of its originator; for Rudolf Steiner did not assume the role of a philosopher and a teacher of other men until he had reached the age of forty years and had brought to full maturity processes of thought which can be traced back all the way to his childhood. Nevertheless, it will clarify our conception of the man and will add to the interest of this brief sketch of his life and illuminate it in retrospect if we do here summarize briefly the fundamentals of his conception of the world and of man. Whatever may seem startling in this bald analysis of his thought will in turn be clarified when placed in its proper setting, which can be done only as we trace the genesis and evolution of his whole system of ideas.
Some of us may have heard about Waldorf schools which were based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. He even wrote a book on bees that was fascinating and not at all what I expected. I have yet to meet anybody with his wealth of wisdom.
For those of us who are believers in Christ he takes it to the next level. Most of us have a mere historical knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth and know the rest from our own understanding of the bible. There are likely a lot of questions we have that have yet to be answered to our satisfaction. There is so much more to learn about his life and death that will immensely to our inner being.
Rudolf Steiner’s created the term Anthroposophy (An-thro-pos-o-phy). Here is Wikipedia defines the term.:
Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development. More specifically, it aims to develop faculties of perceptive imagination, inspiration and intuition through cultivating a form of thinking independent of sensory experience,[1][2] and to present the results thus derived in a manner subject to rational verification.
In its investigations of the spiritual world, anthroposophy aims to attain the precision and clarity of natural science’s investigations of the physical world.[1] Anthroposophy brings the spiritual traditions of central Europe – including transcendental idealist philosophy – into a modern context,[3] though its historical roots lie partly in Theosophy.
Anthroposophical ideas have been applied practically in many areas including Steiner/Waldorf education, special education (most prominently the Camphill Movement), biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine, ethical banking and the arts.[1][4][5][6] The Anthroposophical Society has its international center at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.
I have been to the Goetheanum in Switzerland. Its architecture is amazing and the artwork and auditorium were spiritually moving.
We will see that he has studied the spiritual world using the same methods as a biologist studies plants. The difference is he studies aspects that can not be verified with our five senses. He was able to see these other worlds directly, but wanted to understand what he was seeing.
We must read his books with a completely open mind. He often stresses that he does not want us to believe it as fact. but just to allow it into our minds and let the powers of thought work on it for a while. It is only our own limitations that will allow it in. Our higher selves will help us decide its validity.
Olin D. Wannamaker used these words:
The open-minded reader, hospitable even to the most unexpected visitors from other minds, may at least be willing to entertain these ideas as transient guests until they shall either have established their right of residence or proven their incompatibility with the rest of his inner world of thought.
He also added:
It is important, however, not to make the radical mistake at this point of adjudging this first single element in the analysis of his world-conception and then accepting or rejecting the whole fabric according as we may react at this stage. Let us take what we may call, if we so choose, Rudolf Steiner’s postulates, though he would never have called them by a name implying purely logical and inferential reasoning, and simply let them lie in our minds like seed in the soil. If, when all these germinal ideas are planted within the mind, we do not discover that there is a vitality in them, that they spring into life and growth, then we cannot do otherwise than go our own way without any help from them. To reject one of the ideas before we have hospitably entertained them all together is to render impossible any reasonable consideration of a world-conception which, to many thoughtful persons, is proving to be in extraordinary measure stimulating and satisfying, and also capable of producing concrete results in varied fields of application.
I am amazed how such a man can be so unknown. He seems to have all the answers that we are seeking. We know that science is reaching its limits, but scientists are not equipped to know where to go next. We know religion in its current state has reached its limits. We continue to question. Thinking is our nature and is in our nature.
One final quote confirms my amazement.
“That the academic world has managed to dismiss Steiner’s works as inconsequential and irrelevant, is one of the intellectual wonders of the twentieth century. Anyone who is willing to study those vast works with an open mind (let us say, a hundred of his titles) will find himself faced with one of the greatest thinkers of all time, whose grasp of the modern sciences is equaled only by his profound learning in the ancient ones.”
Russell W. Davenport, The Dignity of Man.
We will see what he has to say about our make-up as body, soul, and spirit. We will learn much that will help us see our path more clearly. We will learn how to use our minds more completely. Remember we take in the impressions of the physical world through our senses and we also take in impressions from the spiritual world through our intuitions. When we learn to about these two worlds as well as the soul world we will have a firm foundation upon which we can base our future studies.
I could speak about Rudolf Steiner and his books for years and still barely scratch the surface. I will stop here for today.