Why I Am an Anthroposophist
To come right to the point, I never liked calling myself an anthroposophist or a Christian. Both concepts are too pretentious, they seem to invoke images that don’t fit me, and – this goes especially for the anthroposophy part - I’m too individualistic to describe myself as such a species.
But… for 30 years, I have been studying anthroposophy and this has played a huge role in my life, up to the point of career choice. Soon after discovering Rudolf Steiner, I became fascinated by him. That does not mean that I haven’t struggled with anthroposophy and Christianity. I have, a lot actually. I have strained away from it: there were times when I doubted anthroposophy was the way forward for the world, whether it could help me become a better or happier person, or whether it was true at all. But each time, when I pondered the big questions of life hard enough, and delved into Steiner deep enough, I came back to anthroposophy and finally accepted the fact that Rudolf Steiner would simply be a continuous factor in my life whether I liked it or not ;-)
And hey, since many people (according to Google Search data) search on questions such as “what is an anthroposophist”, and this website aims to answer such questions that people really have (instead of pushing my own topics first and foremost) I decided to put up this page.
Search for Truth While Young
Growing up as a boy, I remember having soft and vague but undeniable feelings and impressions about the nature of our world and human life. For example, I simply felt that my existence went way back beyond 1974, that I had a previous existence on this earth. I had these images coming up of me wandering through some forest somewhere in Europe somewhere in in early centuries A.D.
I also had vague sympathies towards Christianity. Though my parents were agnostic and basically disliked churches, I grew up in an area dominated by pretty orthodox and strict Protestants. There were no less than four Christian churches in my small village (who didn’t like each other). Each time I biked past them, I felt that there was truth behind them but this was not the place where I would find truth in religious matters, as if I felt that they largely conserved an old tradition and had no living contact to the world of the spirit anymore.
As a boy, looking up the sky and pondering the big questions of life, I felt a kind of mystical, monistic unity in the entire cosmos. I figured there could only be one final reality – that is more or less the definition of “monistic”, I learned later – and, thus, every element of this reality had to be connected in a thousand ways to all other elements. And as I somehow was convinced of reincarnation, there had to be a spiritual world where you travel through from one incarnation to the next. So a ‘true worldview’ would have to be holistic and spiritual. I strongly suspected there had to be people somewhere who knew more of this, that ‘the truth was out there’, but I had no clue where to start searching. I did ponder what the conditions of such a truth had to be for me. For one thing, such a truth had to be holistic, because of the unity of the universe. It should be at the least the beginning of a big explanation of everything that existed. And, I thought, if such a truth was really the truth then it would also have to have practical applications, and it would have to bear fruit in the people who were engaged with it, otherwise it would not serve life truly.
Again, these were soft and vague feelings, but I can still remember vividly how I felt.
As a teen, I was difficult for my parents and teachers. Around age 15 I was a metal head and listened to first heavy and trash metal, then to death and black metal bands like Morbid Angel and God Dethroned with lyrics worshipping the devil. I was fascinated by this, never felt like a devil worshipper or anything, but I just felt that there was something real to the dark side they sang about. Later I was into alternative and hippy music and had spiritual experiences smoking marihuana and listening to The Doors. But through my teens I was also secretly reading a Bible regularly – only the New Testament – that I stole from my late grandmother (she wasn’t reading it anyway and never missed it). And I had deep mystical feelings of truth, of finding pure spiritual gold in it.
The Reality of the Spirit Proven in Five Minutes
When I around age 20 learned about anthroposophy – it kind of found me as my older sister had encountered and embraced it and was telling me enthusiastically about it – I was particularly struck by its strong philosophy of science aspect. Through my sister, I met some anthroposophists who were very knowledgeable about this. Through long discussions I realized how absurd the worldview of scientific materialism really is, and how far this stretches. This became the biggest reason for me becoming an anthroposophist.
I’ll explain the essence. Bear with me for 5 minutes as this is hugely important.
Scientific materialism says that in the end, the entire universe including plants, animals and humans consist of matter and matter is ruled by deterministic (fixed) physical and chemical laws. But that would include our capabilities to think and argue. Free will would not exist, our consciousness is just a by-product of random chemical processes in our bodies, first of all our brains. At the same time, scientific truth is only possible if humans have an independent, autonomous mind or spirit (whatever you call it) that decides what is “true” ONLY through fact and reason -- or in other words, if it can argue and draw conclusions autonomously and independently from any chemical or physical processes in our brains.
This is an internal logical contradiction. Scientific materialism is a typical product of human consciousness and at the same time it says that human consciousness has no capacity to autonomously establish truth.
Karl Popper, arguably today the most influential philosopher of science, famously pointed to this logical contradiction too. But Rudolf Steiner worked this view out much earlier, better and more detailed than Popper, and never got the credit for this. His philosophical works are mainly ignored by academia. But anthroposophy is about the only credible explanation known to me that explains where the autonomous and independent human spirit came into being and how it works.
Anthroposophy Ticked All Boxes
In hindsight, I can say that anthroposophy met all the requirements I had developed over the years as a precondition for truth.
First and foremost, Anthroposophy is a spiritual BUT monistic worldview that claims that there is only one reality but this reality has layers: e.g. our physical world, the etheric world, the astral world and the pure spiritual world (or Devachan). We humans can directly see only the physical world with our physical eyes. But the universe is actually one whole, and all people, animals, and plants live in a reality that is both physical and non-physical (for example etheric, astral, or spiritual). All humans have higher senses that can be developed, and through these senses they can gradually learn to perceive these higher levels of reality. The higher worlds are therefore not closed to us. The physical world is an outward expression of these higher worlds. Plants have a physical body and a life (etheric) body. Animals have a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. Humans have all of these and, in addition, an “I” or true self, which makes each person unique and makes the human being immortal. It is this “I” which travels from one incarnation, through the spiritual worlds, to a next incarnation on earth (e.g. reincarnation).
Anthroposophy is also a holistic worldview: it explains how everything in our cosmos and human world is connected to the other parts in a million ways. Steiner argued that logical thinking is valid across all realities – physical, etheric, astral or spiritual – and this makes it possible for the average human individual to check any statements on higher realities. There is an internal logic to the insights of anthroposophy. And indeed, isn’t that the way we all learn, by comparing one insight to other insights? One can learn a lot about China while never having been there, simply by comparing all that you read about China to everything else, and making one logical story out of it.
When you start to look at our world like this, it all begins making sense and this is deeply satisfying and fruitful for everyday life.
Anthroposophy also has a dozen practical applications that are derived directly from its esoteric worldview – such as Waldorf education, biodynamic farming, curative pedagogy, organic architecture, various therapeutical approaches – which are all generally viewed as very fruitful. This makes that anthroposophy serves life, but it’s also a testimony to it. After all, isn’t it true that the goodness of the tree is determined by the goodness of its fruits?
Moreover, anthroposophy has proven to be particularly helpful for me in difficult life circumstances. I won’t dwell on these here, but we all know that life can be difficult, dark and sometimes outright scary. It is especially in those circumstances that I found a way forward through deep insights of Rudolf Steiner.
So Why Am I an Anthroposophist?
Summing it up… I am into anthroposophy because of:
- its strong basis in philosophy and epistemology (i.e. theory of knowledge)
- its holistic nature that explains not just the physical realm, but also the worlds of the soul and the spirit, making it only logical whole
- its fruitful practical application towards all kinds of problems in life, from the crisis of our educational systems through all kinds of social problems
- that living with anthroposophy is deeply satisfying and makes life meaningful
- that anthroposophy was particularly helpful for me at life’s darkest moments.