Waldorf Problems

Steiner presented himself as an apostle of peace and love. Yet he affirmed the need for violence. Consider the following quotations:

We'll start with one that will be familiar to my faithful readers: "White mankind is still on the path of absorbing spirit more deeply into its essence. Yellow mankind is on the path of preserving the period when the spirit is kept away from the body, when the spirit can only be sought outside of the human-physical organization. But the result will have to be that the transition from the fifth cultural epoch to the sixth cultural epoch [i.e., long, long historical periods: We are currently in the fifth (out of seven) "age" of the fifth epoch] cannot happen differently than as a violent fight between white mankind and colored mankind in the most varied areas." [Rudolf Steiner, DIE GEISTIGEN HINTERGRÜNDE DES ERSTEN WELTKRIEGES {The Spiritual Background of the First World War}, p. 38.]

Apocalyptic visions figure heavily in Steiner's books. We'll consider this matter further in a moment. But first, let's hear from Steiner on a more immediate question of violence, specifically corporal punishment in schools. Steiner was for it:  "Under certain circumstances it may be necessary [for a teacher] to spank a child...I have to admit that there are rowdies...." [FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, p. 22.] Note that Steiner was discussing what a teacher may need to do, not what a parent might do. And, because he was making this statement to the teachers at his first Waldorf school, he was clearly giving Waldorf teachers at least qualified permission to use physical violence on the students ("it may be necessary"). Whether any particular Waldorf or Steiner school follows Steiner's lead in this matter is up to the faculty at that school. But parents considering Waldorfs should certainly look into the issue.

Returning to the need for apocalypse: Steiner taught that an all-encompassing war must be fought in order to clear the way for future human evolution. Basically, humanity will be able to progress because the good humans will defeat the bad. Maybe so, or maybe not. In any event, Steiner's vision is bloody.

Steiner often referred to the needed war as The War of All Against All. I won’t trouble you with extended quotations, here. More revealing is a quick sampling of statements Steiner made on the subject. I’ll give three titles with the page numbers of the brief quotations, then the quotations themselves. You can easily confirm these quotations by doing a Google Book Search, etc., or by get your hands on actual copies of the books. Many copies are floating around out there in the Anthroposophical and anti-Anthroposophical communities. (Good humans and bad?)

Rudolf Steiner, EVIL, p. 194: “Consider that through evil separating from good, the good will be immeasurably strengthened, and that after the great War of All against All the good will....”

Rudolf Steiner, READING THE PICTURES OF THE APOCALYPSE, p. 82: "After the war of all against all, we will have achieved a stage of evolution where we live in a bodily nature in such a way that we are no longer slaves of...”

Rudolf Steiner, THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN, p. 141: “Consider that through the evil separating from the good, the good will receive its greatest strengthening. For after the great War of All against All...”

The theme of this coming showdown runs through so many Steiner books, it is hard to keep track. At the end of this page, I’ve appended a list of additional titles you may want to examine.

Cautionary note: If you get involved in reading Steiner, you’ll soon find that various English-language volumes overlap one another. Many of the books are compilations of miscellaneous lectures: Thus, the same lecture may wind up in multiple volumes. Anthroposophical publishers only have so much material to work with (especially because they decline to print some of Steiner’s most heinous statements, so some German titles remain available only in German). But that’s okay. In Steiner's case, the less, the better. Anyway, you may find you have to read some of Steiner’s stuff several times before you can believe your eyes.

Among the books listed below, you'll find Steiner's THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH: An Esoteric Study of the Subterranean Spheres. As the subtitle suggests, this book contains some surprises. (Actually, all of Steiner's books do. I consider them unintentional joke books. But, hey, that's just me. (Or is it?))

In discussing a bit of THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH, I may seem to be veering off the topic of violence. But nothing moves in straight lines in Steiner's universe. So: Steiner taught that the Earth is a single, living organism. Further, he said it is comprised of several layers of matter and spirit. Various layers are capable of sentience, and some are quite sensitive. The layer called the "Fire Earth," for instance, "would cry out if stepped on" [p. 31].

More to the point is what Steiner says in THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH about the sources of human strife. Steiner called the the eighth layer of the earth "the Splintering Earth." This layer has much to answer for: “The essential thing is that this layer shatters moral qualities ... Through the power it radiates up to the earth’s surface, it is responsible for the fact that strife and disharmony exist ... ” [Ibid., p. 31.] Now that's very interesting. Didn't Steiner give a completely different explanation of human tribulations elsewhere? Something to do with the demonic powers, wasn't it? (See "Bad, Badder, Baddest" on this Web site.) The demonic roughnecks, Lucifer and Ahriman, played such nasty tricks on humanity as allowing more than one race to exist, which has caused all sorts of troubles and will cause even more. (See http://steiner-predicts.com.)

In sorting through such matters, here's a helpful hint: Don't expect Steiner to be consistent or even to make sense. He wasn't and couldn't. But sometimes he was awful.

Let’s end with a simple comparison. Whom shall we follow? Whom should we heed? If you're shopping for a spiritual guide, you can do better even in pop culture (even old pop culture: echoes of the recent past) than between the covers of a Steiner joke book. For instance:

Guru #1, Rudolf Steiner: "...a violent fight between white mankind and colored mankind in the most varied areas."

Non-Guru #1: (a guy who rejected gurus: "I don't believe in magic, I don't believe in I-Ching, I don't believe in Bible, I don't believe in Tarot, I don't believe in ...") and hence declined to become one ("I don't believe in Beatles"), John Lennon: "All You Need Is Love," "Give Peace a Chance," "gimme some truth (All I Want Is The Truth)."

So, just for laughs, let’s say this is our choice. A self-important bugger or a self-effacing Beatle? (Yeah, yeah, John had an ego. And I'm dating myself: The Beatles?  Still, my vote is in.) I'm joking, obviously. But the truth is that we can easily find people who offer us more wisdom than Rudolf Steiner ever did.

Here are additional titles in which there are Steinerian references to the War of All Against All. Let the reader beware:

Rudolf Steiner, THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERY

Rudolf Steiner, ESOTERIC CHRISTIANITY AND THE MISSION OF CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUTZ...

Rudolf Steiner, GOSPEL OF ST.JOHN IN ITS RELATION OF THE OTHER THREE GOSPELS, PARTICULARLY...

Rudolf Steiner, HOW CAN MANKIND FIND THE CHRIST AGAIN?

Rudolf Steiner, THE INFLUENCES OF LUCIFER AND AHRIMAN

Rudolf Steiner, THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH

Rudolf Steiner, ORIGINS OF NATURAL SCIENCE

Rudolf Steiner, REVERSE RITUAL

Rudolf Steiner, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

Rudolf Steiner, SPIRITUALISM, MADAME BLAVATSKY & THEOSOPHY

Rudolf Steiner, THE TEMPLE LEGEND AND THE GOLDEN LEGEND

Rudolf Steiner, UNIVERSE, EARTH AND MAN IN THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO EGYPTIAN MYTHS AND MODERN...

Rudolf Steiner, The APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN: Lectures on the Book of Revelation (SteinerBooks, 1977).

Rudolf Steiner, EVIL (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1997).

Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998).

Rudolf Steiner, DIE GEISTIGEN HINTERGRÜNDE DES ERSTEN WELTKRIEGES {The Spiritual Background of the First World War} (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1974).

Rudolf Steiner, THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH: An Esoteric Study of the Subterranean Spheres (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2007).

Rudolf Steiner, READING THE PICTURES OF THE APOCALYPSE: Notes from Sixteen Lectures (SteinerBooks, 1993).