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Anthroposophy is a spiritual philosophy based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner (25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) which postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development - more specifically through conscientiously cultivating a form of thinking independent of sensory experience.^[1][2] Anthroposophy aims to attain in its investigations of the spiritual world the precision and clarity of natural science's investigations of the physical world.^[1] Whether this is a sufficient basis for anthroposophy to be considered a "spiritual science" has been a matter of controversy.^[3][4]

Anthroposophical ideas have been applied practically in areas including Waldorf education, curative education (most prominently the Camphill movement), biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine, and eurythmy.^[5][3][1][6] The Anthroposophical Society, which has been called the "most important esoteric society in European history"^[7], has its international center at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Etymology of anthroposophy 2 Anthroposophy in brief 2.1 Spiritual knowledge and freedom 2.2 Nature of human being 2.3 Christ between Lucifer and Ahriman 3 Applications 3.1 Waldorf education 3.2 Biodynamic agriculture 3.3 Anthroposophical medicine 3.4 Centers for helping the mentally handicapped (including Camphill Villages) 3.5 Architecture 3.6 Eurythmy 3.7 Banking 3.8 Organizational development, counselling and biography work 3.9 Speech and drama 3.10 Other areas 4 Social goals 5 Esoteric path 5.1 Paths of spiritual development 5.2 Prerequisites to and stages of inner development 5.3 Exercises 6 Place in Western philosophy 6.1 Possibility of a union of science and spirit 7 Relationship to religion 7.1 The Christ as the center of earthly evolution 7.2 Divergence from conventional Christian thought 7.3 The Christian community 8 Reception of anthroposophy 8.1 Notable supporters 8.2 Religious nature 8.3 Scientific basis 8.4 Steiner's statements on race 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 12 External links 12.1 Anthroposophical Societies 12.2 Articles

The early work of the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, culminated in his Philosophy of Freedom (also translated as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path). Here, Steiner developed a concept of free will that is based upon inner experiences, especially those that occur in the creative activity of independent thought.^[1]

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Steiner's interests were leading him further and further into explicitly spiritual areas of research. These studies were of interest to others who were already oriented towards spiritual ideas; among these was the Theosophical Society. Theosophy was en vogue in Esotericism in Germany and Austria during that time. Steiner took a leadership role in the Society's chapter in Germany, becoming its secretary.

By 1907, a split between Steiner and the mainstream Theosophical Society began to be apparent. While the Society was oriented toward an Eastern and especially Indian approach, Steiner was trying to develop a path that embraced Christianity and natural science.^[8] The split became irrevocable when Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society, began to present the child Jiddu Krishnamurti as the reincarnated Christ. Steiner strongly objected and considered any comparison between Krishnamurti and Christ to be nonsense. Steiner's continuing differences with Besant led him to separate from the Theosophical Society Adyar; he was followed by the great majority of the membership of the Theosophical Society's German chapter, as well as members of other national chapters.^[8]

By this time, Steiner had reached considerable stature as a spiritual teacher.^[9] He talked about what he understood to be direct experience of the Akashic Records (sometimes called the "Akasha Chronicle"), thought to be a spiritual chronicle of the history, pre-history, and future of the world. In a number of works,^[10] Steiner described a path of inner development that he felt would enable anyone to attain comparable spiritual experiences. Sound vision could be developed, in part, by practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitive self-discipline, concentration, and meditation; in particular, a person's moral development must precede the development of spiritual faculties.^[1]

In 1912, the Anthroposophical Society was formed. After World War I, the Anthroposophical movement took on new directions. Projects such as schools, centers for the handicapped, organic farms and medical clinics were established, all inspired by anthroposophy. In 1923, faced with a split between older members focusing on inner development and younger members eager to become active in the social transformations of the time, Steiner refounded the Society in an inclusive manner and established a School for Spiritual Science. As a spiritual basis for the refounded movement, Steiner composed a Foundation Stone Meditation expressing the aspects of the human soul in relation to the outer and spiritual worlds. Steiner died just over a year later, in 1925.

The Second World War temporarily hindered the anthroposophical movement in most of Continental Europe, as the Anthroposophical Society and most of its daughter movements (e.g. Waldorf education) were banned by the National Socialists;^[11] virtually no anthroposophists ever joined the National Socialist Party.^[12]

Societies for the cultivation of anthroposophy now exist in fifty countries, and there exist about 10,000 institutions around the world working on the basis of anthroposophy.^[13] The Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland is the world-wide center of the anthroposophic movement.

The term anthroposophy links the Greek roots anthropos, human, and sophia, wisdom. Steiner began using the word to refer to his philosophy in the early 1900s as an alternative to theosophy, or divine wisdom. Previous authors who used the term include Agrippa von Nettesheim and Immanuel Hermann Fichte.^[14]

Anthroposophical proponents aim to extend the clarity of the scientific method to phenomena of human soul-life and to spiritual experiences. This requires developing new faculties of objective spiritual perception, which Steiner believed is possible for humanity today. The steps of this process of inner development he identified as consciously achieved imagination, inspiration and intuition.^[6] Steiner believed that the results of this form of spiritual research should be expressed in a way that can be understood and evaluated on the same basis as the results of natural science:^[3] "The anthroposophical schooling of thinking leads to the development of a non-sensory, or so-called supersensory consciousness, whereby the 'spiritual researcher' brings the experiences of this realm into ideas, concepts, and expressive language in a form that people can understand who do not yet have the capacity to achieve the supersensory experiences necessary for individual research."^[15]

Steiner hoped to form a spiritual movement that would free the individual from any external authority: "The most important problem of all human thinking is this: to comprehend the human being as a personality grounded in him or herself."^[15] For Steiner, it was the human capacity for rational thought that would allow individuals to comprehend spiritual research on their own and to bypass the danger of dependency on an authority.^[15]

Steiner contrasted the anthroposophical approach with both conventional mysticism, which he considered lacking the clarity necessary for exact knowledge, and natural science, which he considered arbitrarily limited to investigating the outer world.

Main article: Anthroposophical view of the human being

Steiner saw human beings as consisting of a physical body, the nature of which is common to the inorganic world; a life body (also called the etheric body) which all living creatures possess; the bearer of sentience or consciousness (also called the astral body), held also by all animals, and the ego, in which is anchored the faculty of self-awareness unique to human beings.

Anthroposophy describes a broad evolution of human consciousness, as follows. Early stages of human evolution possess an intuitive perception of reality, including a clairvoyant perception of spiritual realities. Humanity has progressively evolved an increasing reliance of intellectual faculties and a corresponding loss of intuitive or clairvoyant experiences, which have become atavistic. The increasing intellectualization of consciousness, initially a progressive direction of evolution, has led to an excessive reliance on abstraction and a loss of contact with both natural and spiritual realities, however; in order to go further new capacities must be developed that combine the clarity of intellectual thought with the imagination, and beyond this with consciously achieved inspiration and intuitive insights.^[16]

Anthroposophy speaks of the reincarnating soul and spirit: that the human being passes between stages of existence, incarnating into an earthly body, living a life, leaving the body behind and entering into the spiritual worlds before returning to be born again into a new life on earth. Steiner called the dependence between different lives karma.^[17][18] After the death of the physical body, the human spirit recapitulates the past life, perceiving its events as they were experienced by the objects of its actions. A complex transformation takes place between the review of the past life and the preparation for the next life, the individual's karmic condition eventually leading to a choice of parents, physical body, disposition and capacities that will provide the challenges and opportunities needed for further development, which includes karmically chosen tasks for the future life.^[16]

Lucifer and his counterpart Ahriman figure in anthroposophy as two polar, generally evil influences on world and human evolution. Steiner described both positive and negative aspects of both figures, however: Lucifer as the light spirit that "plays on human pride and offers the delusion of divinity", but also motivates creativity and spirituality; Ahriman as the dark spirit that tempts human beings to "deny [their] link with divinity and to live entirely on the material plane", but also stimulates intellectuality and technology. Both figures exert a negative effect on humanity when their influence becomes misplaced or one-sided, yet their influences are necessary for human freedom to unfold.^[1][3]

According to anthroposophy, each human being has the task to find a balance between these opposing influences; each person is helped in this task through the mediating being of the Representative of Humanity, also known as the Christ being, a spiritual entity which stands between and harmonizes the two extremes.^[3]

Further information: Rudolf Steiner's Breadth of activities

Applications of anthroposophy include:

Main article: Waldorf education

Out of the anthroposophical movement have come over 900 schools world-wide.^[19] These are often called Waldorf Schools, after the first such school, founded in 1919; they are also sometimes called Steiner Schools. Sixteen Waldorf schools in 14 countries have been affiliated with the United Nations' UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network, a program which sponsors education projects which foster improved quality of education throughout the world, in particular in terms of its ethical, cultural and international dimensions.^[20] Waldorf schools receive full or partial governmental funding in some European nations and in parts of the United States (as Waldorf methods public or charter schools). Since the first school opened in Germany at the end of World War I, Waldorf education has spread to every continent, and has been characterized as "the leader of the international movement for a New Education,"^[21] Schools based on Steiner education are found in a wide variety of communities and cultures: the impoverished favelas of São Paulo^[22] and the wealthy suburbs of New York City,^[22] in India, Egypt, Australia, Holland and Mexico. Though most of the early Waldorf schools were teacher-founded, the schools today are usually initiated and later supported by an active parent community.^[21] Waldorf education is one of the most visible practical applications of an anthroposophical view and understanding of the human being.^[23]

Main article: Biodynamic agriculture

Biodynamic agriculture began in the 1920s; Steiner's Agriculture Course was one of the earliest works on organic agriculture,^[24] making him one of the founders of the modern organic farming movement.^[25][26] Numerous bio-dynamic farms now exist in a great number of countries.

Main article: Anthroposophical medicine

Steiner gave several series of lectures to physicians, and out of this grew an alternative medical movement that now includes hundreds of M.D.s, chiefly in Europe and North America, and that has its own clinics, hospitals and medical schools.^[1]

Early in the twentieth century, when proper care for the handicapped was largely ignored in many countries, anthroposophical homes and communities were founded for the needy. The first was the Sonnenhof in Switzerland, founded by Ita Wegman in 1922; slightly later, in 1940, the Camphill Movement was founded by Karl König in Scotland. The latter in particular has spread widely, and there are now well over a hundred Camphill communities and other anthroposophical homes for both children and adults in more than twenty-two countries around the world.^[27]

Steiner himself designed around thirteen buildings, many of them significant works in a unique, organic-expressionistic style.^[28] Foremost among these are his two designs for the Goetheanum. Thousands of further buildings have been built by a later generation of anthroposophic architects.^[29] Architects who have been strongly influenced by the anthroposophic style include Imre Makovecz (HU), Hans Scharoun and Joachim Eble (DE), Erik Asmussen (SW), Kenji Imai (Japan), Thomas Rau, Anton Alberts and Max van Huut (NL), Christopher Day and Camphill Architects (UK), Thompson and Rose (USA), Denis Bowman (CA), and Gregory Burgess (Australia).^[30]

One of the most famous contemporary buildings by an anthroposophical architect is an ING Bank building in Amsterdam, which has been given many awards for its ecological design and approach to a self-sustaining ecology as an autonomous building.

In the arts, Steiner's new art of eurythmy gained early renown. Eurythmy seeks to renew the spiritual foundations of dance, transforming speech and music into visible movement. There are now active stage groups and training centers, mostly of modest proportions, in many countries.^[31]

Today around the world there are a number of banks, companies, charitable institutions, and schools for developing cooperative forms of business which are working out of Steiner's ideas about economic associations aiming at harmonious and socially responsible roles in the world economy.^[1] The first anthroposophic bank was the Gemeinschaftsbank für Leihen und Schenken in Bochum, Germany, founded in 1974.^[32] Socially-responsible banks founded out of anthroposophy in the English-speaking world include Triodos Bank, founded in 1980 and active in the UK and Netherlands, and the U.S.-based Rudolf Steiner Foundation (RSF),^[33] incorporated in 1984, and as of 2004 with estimated assets of $70 million. According to Co-op America and the Social Investment Forum Foundation, Rudolf Steiner Foundation is one of the top 10 organizations which "best exemplify the building of economic opportunity and hope for individuals through community investing."^[34][35]

Bernard Lievegoed, a social economist, founded a new study of individual and institutional development oriented towards humanizing organizations and linked with Steiner's ideas of the threefold social order. This work is represented by the NPI Institute for Organisational Development in Holland and sister organizations in many other countries.^[1] Various forms of biography and counselling work have been developed on the basis of anthroposophy.

There are also anthroposophical movements to renew speech and drama. The former go back to the work of Marie Steiner-von Sivers; among the better known of the latter is the approach founded by Michael Chekhov, the nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov.^[36]

Other areas of anthroposophic work include:

• John Wilkes' fountain-like Flowforms. These sculptural forms guide water into rhythmic movement, and are used both in water-purification projects and as decorative fountains.^[37][38]
• Phenomenological approaches to science,^[1]
• New approaches to painting and sculpture.^[1]

Main article: Social Threefolding

For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active and well-known in Germany, in part because he lectured widely proposing social reforms. Steiner was a sharp critic of nationalism, which he saw as outdated, and a proponent of achieving social solidarity through individual freedom.^[1] A petition proposing a radical change in the German constitution and expressing his basic social ideas (signed by Herman Hesse, among others) was widely circulated. His main book on social reform is titled Toward Social Renewal.^[1]

Anthroposophy continues to aim at reforming society through maintaining and strengthening the independence of the spheres of cultural life, human rights and the economy. It emphasizes a particular ideal in each of these three realms of society:^[1]

1. Freedom in cultural life
2. Equality of rights, the sphere of legislation and the judiciary
3. Fraternity in the economic sphere

“	A person seeking inner development must first of all make the attempt to give up certain formerly held inclinations. Then, new inclinations must be acquired by constantly holding the thought of such inclinations, virtues or characteristics in one's mind. They must be so incorporated into one's being that a person becomes enabled to alter his soul by his own will-power. This must be tried as objectively as a chemical might be tested in an experiment. A person who has never endeavored to change his soul, who has never made the initial decision to develop the qualities of endurance, steadfastness and calm logical thinking, or a person who has such decisions but has given up because he did not succeed in a week, a month, a year or a decade, will never conclude anything inwardly about these truths.	”
	— Rudolf Steiner, "On the Inner Life," [2]

According to Steiner, a real spiritual world exists out of which the material one gradually condensed, and evolved. The spiritual world, Steiner held, can in the right circumstances be researched through direct experience, by persons practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitive self-discipline. Steiner described many exercises he said were suited to strengthening such self-discipline; the most complete exposition of these is found in his book Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment. The aim of these exercises is to develop higher levels of consciousness through meditation and observation. Details about the spiritual world, Steiner suggested, could on such a basis be discovered and reported, though no more infallibly than the results of natural science.^[6]

Steiner regarded his research reports as being important aids to others seeking to enter into spiritual experience. He suggested that a combination of spiritual exercises (for example, concentrating on an object such as a seed), moral development (control of thought, feelings and will combined with openness, tolerance and flexibility) and familiarity with other spiritual researchers' results would best further an individual's spiritual development. He consistently emphasized that any inner, spiritual practice should be undertaken in such a way as not to interfere with one's responsibilities in outer life.^[6]

In anthroposophy, artistic expression is also treated as a potentially valuable bridge between spiritual and material reality.^[39]

For Steiner, the aim of spiritual development is to achieve "knowledge of higher worlds" (cf. his eponymous central work). Steiner's stated prerequisites to beginning on a spiritual path including a willingness to take up serious cognitive studies, a respect for factual evidence, and a responsible attitude. Central to progress on the path itself is a harmonious cultivation of the following qualities:^[40]

• Control over one's own thinking
• Control over one's will
• Composure
• Positivity
• Impartiality

Steiner sees meditation as a concentration and enhancement of the power of thought. By focusing consciously on an idea, feeling or intention the meditant seeks to arrive at "pure thinking", a state exemplified by but not confined to pure mathematics. In Steiner's view, conventional sensory-material knowledge is achieved through relating perception and concepts. The anthroposophic path of esoteric training articulates three further stages of "supersensory" knowledge, which do not necessarily follow strictly sequentially in any single individual's spiritual progress.^{[40] [41]}

• Through focusing on symbolic patterns, images and poetic mantra, the meditant can achieve consciously directed Imaginations that allow sensory phenomena to appear as the expression of underlying beings of a soul-spiritual nature.
• By overcoming such imaginative pictures, the meditant can become conscious of the meditative activity itself, which leads to experiences of expressions of soul-spiritual beings unmediated by sensory phenomena or qualities. Steiner calls this stage Inspiration.
• Through intensifying the will-forces through exercises such as a chronologically-reversed review of the day's events, a further stage of inner independence from sensory experience is achieved, leading to direct contact, and even unification, with spiritual beings ("Intuition") without loss of individual awareness.^[40]

Steiner described numerous exercises which he believed would bring spiritual development, and other anthroposophists have added many others. A central principle is that "for every step in spiritual perception, three steps are to be taken in moral development." According to Anthroposophy, moral development reveals the extent to which one has achieved control over one's inner life and exercises this in a direction in harmony with others' spiritual life; it shows the real progress in spiritual development, the fruits of which are given in spiritual perception. It also guarantees the capacity to distinguish between false perceptions or illusions (which are possible in perceptions of both the outer world and the inner world) and true perceptions, or, better said, to distinguish in any perception between the influence of subjective elements (i.e. viewpoint) and the objective reality to which the perception points.^[6]

Main article: Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development

Steiner built upon Goethe's conception of an imaginative power capable of synthesizing the sense-perceptible form of a thing (an image of its outer appearance) and the concept we have of that thing (an image of its inner structure or nature). Steiner added to this the conception that a further step in the development of thinking is possible when the thinker observes his or her own thought processes. "The organ of observation and the observed thought process are then identical, so that the condition thus arrived at is simultaneously one of perception through thinking and one of thought-through perception."^[6]

Thus, in Steiner's view, though all human experience begins being conditioned by the subject-object divide - this he takes as a given - through inner activity (through an act of free will) we can overcome this divide. In this connection, Steiner examines the step from thinking that is determined by outer impressions to what he calls sense-free thinking. He characterizes thoughts he considers to be without sensory content, such as mathematical or logical thoughts, as free deeds. Stiener believed that he had thus located the origin of the free will in our thinking, and in particular in sense-free thinking.^[6]

Some of the epistemic basis for Steiner's later anthroposophical work is contained in the seminal work, The Philosophy of Freedom,^[42]. In his early works, Steiner sought to overcome what he perceived as the dualism of Cartesian idealism and Kantian subjectivism by linking on to Goethe's conception of the human being as a natural-supernatural entity, that is: natural in that humanity is a product of nature, supernatural in that through our conceptual powers we extend nature's realm, allowing it to achieve a reflective capacity in us as philosophy, art and science.^[43] Steiner was one of the first European philosophers to overcome the subject-object split in Western thought.^[43] Though not well-known among philosophers, his philosophical work was taken up by Owen Barfield (and through him influenced the Inklings, a group that included such writers as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis)^[44] and Richard Tarnas.

Steiner believed in the possibility of applying the clarity of scientific thinking to spiritual experience, which he saw as deriving from an objectively existing spiritual world.^[45] Steiner identified mathematics, which attains certainty through thinking itself, thus through inner experience rather than empirical observation,^[46] as the basis of his epistemology of spiritual experience.^[47]

Steiner's writing, though appreciative of all religions and cultural developments, emphasizes Western tradition as having evolved to meet contemporary needs.^[8] He describes Christ and his mission on earth of bringing individuated consciousness as having a particularly important place in human evolution.^[1]

Steiner emphasized his belief that:

• Christianity has evolved out of previous religions,
• The being that manifests in Christianity also manifests in all faiths and religions,
• Each religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born,
• The historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably to meet the on-going evolution of humanity.^[3]

For Steiner, Christ is a being that unifies all religions. He believed that Christ was not any particular religious faith, but was instead the central force in human evolution. This "Christ Being" is, according to Steiner, not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's "evolutionary" processes and of human history, which he believed to be manifested in all religions and cultures.^[3]

"Spiritual science does not want to usurp the place of Christianity; on the contrary it would like to be instrumental in making Christianity understood. Thus it becomes clear to us through spiritual science that the being whom we call Christ is to be recognized as the center of life on earth, that the Christian religion is the ultimate religion for the earth's whole future. Spiritual science shows us particularly that the pre-Christian religions outgrow their one-sidedness and come together in the Christian faith. It is not the desire of spiritual science to set something else in the place of Christianity; rather it wants to contribute to a deeper, more heartfelt understanding of Christianity."^[48]

This view has certain similarities to the concepts of Christogenesis advocated by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements:

• One central point of divergency is Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma.

• Steiner differentiated three contemporary paths by which he believed it possible to arrive at Christ:
  • Through heart-filled experiences of the Gospels; this is the historically dominant path but Steiner believed it was now falling away.
  • Through inner experiences of a spiritual reality; this Steiner regarded as increasingly the path of spiritual or religious seekers today.
  • Through initiation, corresponding to the path of anthroposophical knowledge, whereby the reality of Christ's death and resurrection are experienced; Steiner believed this to be the path people will tend to take in the future.^[3]

• Steiner also believed that there were two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from Solomon, as described in the Gospel of Matthew, the other child from Nathan, as described in the Gospel of Luke.^[1] (The genealogies given in the two gospels diverge some thirty generations before Jesus' birth, and 'Jesus' was a common name in biblical times.)

• His view of the second coming of Christ is also unusual; he suggested that this would not be a physical reappearance, but that the Christ being would become manifest in non-physical form, visible to spiritual vision and apparent in community life for increasing numbers of people beginning around the year 1933.[3]

• He emphasized his belief that the future would require humanity to recognize this Spirit of Love in all its genuine forms, regardless of how people named it this being. He also warned that the traditional name, "Christ," might be used yet the true essence of this being of love ignored.

Towards the end of Steiner's life, a group of theology students (Lutheran as well as Catholic) approached Steiner for help in reviving Christianity, in particular "to bridge the widening gulf between modern science and the world of spirit."^[1] They approached a notable Lutheran pastor, Friedrich Rittelmeyer, already working with Steiner's ideas to join their efforts. Out of their cooperative endeavor, the Movement for Religious Renewal, now generally known as The Christian Community, was born. Steiner emphasized that this help was given independently of his anthroposophical work,^[1] as he saw anthroposophy as independent of any particular religion or religious denomination.^[3]

Anthroposophy has had many prominent supporters outside of the movement. Among these have been many writers, artists and musicians; these include Pulitzer Prize-winning and Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow,^[49] Andrej Belyj,^[50][51] Josef Beuys,^[52] Wassily Kandinsky,^[53][54] Nobel Laureates Selma Lagerlöf^[55] and Albert Schweitzer, Andrei Tarkovsky^[56] and Bruno Walter,^[57] and Alternative Nobel Prize winner Ibrahim Abouleish.^[58]

Anthroposophy has sometimes been called religious^[59] and there have been criticisms that any spiritual movement, anthroposophy in particular, is necessarily religious in nature. In 2005, a California federal court ruled that a group alleging anthroposophy is a religion for Establishment Clause purposes did not provide any legally admissible evidence in support of its view; the case is under appeal. In 2000, a court case was brought in France against a government minister for describing anthroposophy as a cult; the court ruled that the minister's comments were defamatory.^[60]

Though Rudolf Steiner studied natural science at the Vienna Technical University at the undergraduate level, his doctorate was in philosophy and very little of his work is directly concerned with the traditional realm of contemporary science, the natural world. His primary interest was in applying the methodology of science to realms of inner experience and the spiritual worlds, and Steiner called anthroposophy Geisteswissenschaft, a term generally used to refer to the humanities and social sciences.^[61]

"[Anthroposophy's] methodology is to employ a scientific way of thinking, but to apply this methodology, which normally excludes our inner experience from consideration, instead to the human being proper."^[62]

As Freda Easton explained in her study of Waldorf schools, "Whether one accepts anthroposophy as a science depends upon whether one accepts Steiner's interpretation of a science that extends the consciousness and capacity of human beings to experience their inner spiritual world."^[63] Sven Ove Hansson has disputed anthroposophy's claim to a scientific basis, stating that its ideas are not empirically derived and neither reproducible nor testable.^[64] Carlo Willmann points out that as, on its own terms, anthroposophical methodology offers no possibility of being falsified except through its own procedures of "spiritual investigation", no intersubjective validation is possible by conventional scientific methods; it thus cannot stand up to positivistic science's critique.^[3]

Peter Schneider calls such objections untenable on the grounds that if a non-sensory, non-physical realm exists, then according to Steiner the experiences of pure thinking possible within the normal realm of consciousness would already be experiences of that, and it would be impossible to exclude the possibility of empirically grounded experiences of other supersensory content. Though Steiner saw that spiritual vision itself is difficult or impossible for others to reproduce, he suggested open-mindedly exploring and rationally testing the results of such research; he also urged others to follow a spiritual training that would allow them to directly apply the methods he used to eventually achieve comparable results.^[6]

Some results of Steiner's research have been investigated and supported by scientists working to further and extend scientific observation in directions suggested by an anthroposophical approach.^[65]

There have been concerns that different races are not always talked about in an equal manner in Steiner's philosophy:

"...with regard to race, a naive version of the evolution of consciousness, a theory foundational to both Steiner's anthroposophy and Waldorf education, sometimes places one race below another in one or another dimension of development."^[66]

To clarify its stance, the Anthroposophical Society in America has stated:

We explicitly reject any racial theory that may be construed to be part of Rudolf Steiner's writings. The Anthroposophical Society in America is an open, public society and it rejects any purported spiritual or scientific theory on the basis of which the alleged superiority of one race is justified at the expense of another race.^[67]

• Hermeticism
• Esotericism in Germany and Austria

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• Prokofieff, Sergei, The East in the Light of the West, ISBN 0-904693-57-0
• Prokofieff, Sergei, The Occult Significance of Forgiveness. Temple Lodge Publishing. ISBN 0-904693-71-6.
• Schaefer, Christopher and Voors, Tyno, Vision in Action. Lindisfarne Books. ISBN 0-940262-74-6
• Schwenk, Sensitive Chaos. Rudolf Steiner Press. ISBN 1-85584-055-3
• Shepherd, A. P. 1885-1968 :The Battle for The Spirit: The Church and Rudolf Steiner; an anthology compiled by and with an introduction by David Clement. Stourbridge: Anastasi
• Shepherd, A. P., 1885-1968 : A Scientist of the Invisible: An introduction to the life and work of Rudolf Steiner. Edinburgh: Floris, 1983.
• Soesman, Albert (1990). The Twelve Senses: An Introduction to Anthroposophy Based on Rudolf Steiners Studies of The Senses. Translation by Jakob M. Cornelis. Stroud: Hawthorn
• Steiner, Marie, Esoteric Studies, ISBN 0-904693-58-9
• Steiner, Rudolf, 1861-1925.
  • Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom; Steiner Books, 1893/1995. ISBN 0-88010-385-X
  • Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1904/2005. ISBN 1-85584-131-2
  • Cosmic Memory, Steiner Books, 1990.
  • How to Know Higher Worlds: a modern path of initiation ; trans. by Christopher Bamford. Hudson, N.Y. : Anthroposophic Press, 1904/c1994.ISBN 0-88010-508-9
  • An Outline of Esoteric Science; trans. by Catherine E. Creeger. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1910/c1997.
  • Verses and Meditations. Rudolf Steiner Press, 2005. [ISBN 1-85584-197-5]
  • Esoteric Development: selected lectures and writings. (Rev. ed.) Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, c2003.
  • A Western Approach to Reincarnation and Karma: selected lectures and writings ; ed. and intr. by René Querido. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, c1997.
• Steiner, Rudolf and Welburn, Andrew, The Mysteries: Rudolf Steiner's Writings on Spiritual Initiation, ISBN 0-86315-243-0
• Suchantke, Andreas, Eco-Geography. Lindisfarne Press. ISBN 0-940262-99-1.
• Swassjan, Karen, The Ultimate Communion of Mankind: A Celebration of Rudolf Steiner's Book "The Philosophy of Freedom", ISBN 0-904693-82-1
• Treichler, Rudolf, Soulways. Hawthorn Press. ISBN 1-869890-13-2
• Verhulst, Jos, Developmental Dynamics in Humans and Other Primates. Adonis Press, 2005. ISBN 0-932776-29-9
• Warren, Edward, Freedom as Spiritual Activity, ISBN 0-904693-60-0
• Welburn, Andrew J. (2004) Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy and the Crisis of Contemporary Thought. Edinburgh: Floris.
• Wilkes, John, Flowforms: The Rhythmic Power of Water. Floris Books. ISBN 0-86315-392-5

• Rudolf Steiner Archive (online works)
• Philosophy of Freedom community website
• The Anthroposophy Network
• Anthros.net - Webguide for Anthroposophy in three leading languages
• Anthroposophical links in Great Britain
• anthromedia.net - Anthroposophy Internet Portal

• World-wide Anthroposophic Society (Goetheanum)
• Anthroposophical Society in America
• Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain
• Anthroposophical Initiatives in India
• Sociedade Antroposófica no Brasil

• Heiner Ullrich, "Rudolf Steiner", Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol. XXIV, no. 3/4, 1994, p. 555-572
• Article: Rudolf Steiner introduced by Owen Barfield.
• Study by the National Cancer Institute on mistletoe's use for treating cancer- " The use of mistletoe as a treatment for cancer has been investigated in more than 30 clinical studies. Reports of improved survival and/or quality of life have been common, but nearly all of the studies had major weaknesses that raise doubts about the reliability of the findings."