(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Rudolf Steiner was born in Austria in 1861. He received recognition as a
scholar when he was invited to edit the Kürschner edition of the natural
scientific writings of Goethe. In 1891, Steiner received his Ph.D. at the
University of Rostock. He then began his work as a lecturer. From the turn
of the century to his death in 1925, he delivered well over 6000 lectures.
He wrote fifty works providing an understanding of the human being and
our place in the universe.
Among the activities springing from the work of Rudolf Steiner are the Waldorf
Schools, Bio-Dynamic Farming and Christology. Steiner’s Anthroposophical
Society funds and operates homes for the treatment of mentally challenged
children as well. Music therapy, drama and speech are worked with as well.
Christian metaphysical thinker Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture in Europe in
1923 on the nature of “Love And Its Meaning In The World” He speaks about
the significance of Apostle Paul’s declaration, “’Not I, but Christ in me.’
Now man can so direct his inner life as to let the Christ-impulse come to
flower in him; he can let Christ’s life flow and breathe through him. He
can absorb the stream which has come to us from pre-earthly life and bring
it to fruition in his life on earth.
“A first stage in the reception of this stream consists in man noticing that
at a particular point in his life he feels something flowering and coming
alive in him. Previously it sat under the threshold of his consciousness,
and he notices for the first time that it is there. It rises, filling him
with inner light, inner warmth, and he knows that this inner life, inner
warmth, inner light, has arisen in him during life on earth. He acquires
a greater knowledge of life on earth than was his birthright. He learns to
know something which arises within his humanity during his life on earth.
And if man is sensible of the light and Life, of the love arising in him,
and feels there the flowing, living presence of the Christ, he will receive
strength to grasp the fully human, the post-earthly, in the free activity
of his own soul. Thus the Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ-impulse are
intimately bound up with the attainment of human freedom, of that consciousness
which is able to suffuse with inner life and warmth, our mere thinking that
is otherwise dead and abstract. The exhortation ‘Know Thyself—bring your
humanity to fruition in your own inner life,’ has been addressed to humanity
through all time, and is still in force today. But the experience of Christ
in man is essential to our own day. It takes its place alongside the injunction
‘Know Thyself,’ and must be given its full weight.”