Anthroposophy ( Spiritual Science)

Anthroposophy, also called "spiritual science", is a spiritual philosophy based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, which states that anyone who "conscientiously cultivates sense-free thinking" can attain experience of and insights into the spiritual world. Those who engage in "anthroposophical research" say that they seek to attain in its investigations of the spiritual world the precision and clarity of natural science's investigations of the physical world. Although Steiner himself saw anthroposophy as a science, it is not generally considered as such by the scientific community.

Although Steiner himself saw anthroposophy as a science, although he did not see it as a natural science.

Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge to guide the Spirit of the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling: and it can be justified inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need.

Anthroposophical ideas have been applied in areas such as Waldorf education, curative education (including the Camphill movement), biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine, and eurythmy.

History
Rudolf Steiner.In his early twenties, Steiner became the editor of Goethe's scientific writings for a major publication of that writer's complete works. He continued this work between 1890-1896 while he also worked at the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar. In the course of this work, Steiner began publishing various works: chiefly, Goethe's Conception of the World and his commentaries on Goethe's scientific essays. His early work culminated in his Die Philosophie der Freiheit (translated variously as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, The Philosophy of Freedom, or Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path), published when he was in his early thirties. Steiner developed a concept of free will that is based upon inner experiences, especially those that occur in the creative activity of independent thought.

Steiner's interests led him further and further into explicitly spiritual and philosophical research. These studies were of interest to others who were already oriented towards spiritual ideas; among these was the Theosophical Society. Steiner took a leadership role in the Society's chapter in Germany, becoming its secretary. His work was distinct from that of most other members of the Society. At first, both he and Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society, harmoniously "agreed to disagree".

By 1907, however, the split between Steiner and the mainstream Theosophical Society widened. 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. Besant intended to present to the world 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 Beasant 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.

By this time, Steiner had reached considerable stature as a spiritual teacher. He claimed to have direct experiences 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, 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.

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.

Steiner died in 1925, but anthroposophical work has continued. 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. The Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland is the world-wide center of the anthroposophic movement.

Etymology of anthroposophy
The term anthroposophy is a construction from the Greek roots anthropo meaning human, and sophia meaning 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 had included Agrippa von Nettesheim and Immanuel Hermann Fichte.

Anthroposophy in brief

Spiritual knowledge and freedom
Anthroposophical proponents aim to bring the clarity of the scientific method into spiritual endeavors. They believe that anthroposophy is a way to extend the positive aspects of the scientific approach into the realm of spiritual phenomena. Steiner contrasted the anthroposophical approach to both conventional mysticism, one-sided in that it lacks the clarity necessary for exact knowledge, and natural science, one-sided by being limited in its application to the natural world. Steiner thought that the precision of scientific training should be applied to the phenomena of the soul and to spiritual experiences. Applying this training would require new skills of spiritual perception, which Steiner identified as imagination, inspiration and intuition.

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." 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.He stated that: "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."

Human being: body, soul and spirit
Main article: Anthroposophical view of the human being
Steiner often described the human being as consisting of an eternal spirit, an evolving soul and a temporal body, giving a detailed analysis of each of these three realms.

Christ vs. Lucifer and Ahriman

The Representative of Humanity (detail).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 and evil effect on humanity because man allows their influence to be misplaced and one-sided," yet their influences are necessary for human freedom to unfold.

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.

Applications
Further information: Rudolf Steiner's Practical initiatives
Applications of anthroposophy include:

Waldorf Education
Out of the anthroposophical movement have come over 900 schools world-wide. 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.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", Schools based on Steiner education are found in a wide variety of communities and cultures: the impoverished favelas of São Paulo and the wealthy suburbs of New York City, 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. Waldorf education is one of the most visible practical applications of an anthroposophical view and understanding of the human being.

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

Anthroposophical medicine
Steiner gave several series of lectures to physicians, and out of this grew a 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 universities.

Other fields of work include an original cancer therapy based on mistletoe extracts developed by anthroposophical researchers. This is a widely used medical treatment in Germany and the European Union. A review of studies of mistletoe includes studies showing that Iscador (mistletoe) has been shown to be effective against cancers in animals, but that its efficacy in humans is unclear.The National Cancer Institute has concluded that mistletoe extract "has been shown to kill cancer cells in the laboratory and to boost the immune system"in animals, and that "there is evidence that mistletoe can boost the immune system" in human beings, but that almost all of the studies done on human beings have major weaknesses that raise doubts about the reliability of their findings.

There is some evidence that children from anthroposophical families have a lower incidence of atopic allergic reactions, however this may be attributable to multiple lifestyle factors associated with anthroposophy that may lessen the risk of atopy in childhood.Centers for helping the mentally handicapped (including Camphill Villages)
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.

Organizational development and biography work
Bernard Lievegoed founded a new study of individual and institutional development; this is represented by the NPI Institute for Organisational Development in Holland and sister organizations in many other countries. Clients of these institutions range from some of the world's largest industrial firms to ordinary people trying to understand their own lives.

Banking
Today around the world there are a number of banks, companies, charitable institutions, and schools for developing new cooperative forms of business, all working partly out of social ideas. The first anthroposophic bank was the Gemeinschaftsbank für Leihen und Schenken in Bochum, Germany; it was started in 1974. 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, incorporated in 1984, and as of 2004 with estimated assets of $70 million. According to Co-op America and the Social Investment Forum Foundation, RSF is "one of the top 10 best organizations exemplifying the building of economic opportunity and hope for individuals through community investing."

Architecture

The First Goetheanum, 1920, Dornach, Switzerland.Steiner himself designed around thirteen buildings, many of them significant works in a unique, organic-expressionistic style. Foremost among these are his two designs for the Goetheanum. Thousands of further buildings have been built by a later generation of anthroposophic architects. Well-known 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).

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

Eurythmy
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.

Speech and Drama
There are also 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

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.
Phenomenological approaches to science,
Painting and sculpture.

Social Goals of Anthroposophy
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. 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.

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:

• Freedom in cultural life
• Equality of rights, the sphere of legislation and the judiciary
• Fraternity in the economic sphere

Esoteric path
“ 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",

Paths of spiritual development
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.

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.

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

The esoteric path of spiritual training
The anthroposophic path of esoteric training can be articulated into three steps, which do not necessarily follow strictly sequentially in any single individual's spiritual progress. The first step in this esoteric training is to recollect and follow how thought processes proceed in a particular situation, contemplating their sequential progression. Usually we attend to the thoughts themselves, the content that arises through thinking, and ignore the process by which they arise. By attending to the latter, we are examining an aspect of our experience that is normally hidden to us by the content itself. Philosophy – especially epistemology –, logic, and aspects of mathematics contemplate the structure and origin of our experience in this way, and thus belong to this first stage of esoteric training. This stage can be called the philosophical state.

A second stage is reached when we no longer, as is usual in philosophy or logic, reflect on past thinking processes, but rather focus our attention on our immediate thinking, on the thinking taking place in the moment of my attention. The unity of contemplating or experiencing subject and the object of contemplation/experienced content is complete here; my attention now focuses on itself, the content of my thinking is my thinking, is itself. This corresponds to the meditative state, known in some spiritual traditions as samadhi, yoga or simply union. My inner activity is now simultaneously subjective – I experience myself bringing it forth – and objective – I experience it given to me as the content of my experience.

A third stage of esoteric training transforms the direction of the will, which is normally directed by the ego, i.e. from within, to an intended result in the outer world. When I seek to accomplish, not a transformation of outer conditions, but a transformation of my inner nature and self, I experience my inner condition – first of all, perhaps, my momentary thoughts, feelings and intentions, but later, my whole character and nature – as subject to my own conscious control. My soul life, which seemed to arise "naturally" and without my conscious participation, is progressively the result of my own conscious activity; I become the creator of my own inner life. Just as advances in technology allow us to progressively transform, more and more completely, the outer, naturally given world, that at an early stage of culture seems to be a factor beyond all human control, so do developments in our inner, moral capacities allow us to progressively transform our inner being to an extent – we discover on this path – only limited by our progress in developing these capacities.

Practical exercises
Steiner described numerous exercises for 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". 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.

Place in Western Philosophy
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."

Thus, in Steiner's view, though all human experience begins being conditioned by the subject-object divide - this is a given -, through our own 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 without sensory content, such as mathematical or logical thoughts, as free deeds. He thus located the origin of the free will in our thinking, and in particular in sense-free thinking.

Some of the epistemic basis for Steiner's later anthroposophical work is contained in the seminal work, The Philosophy of Freedom. In his early works, Steiner sought to overcome the dualism of Cartesian idealism and Kantian subjectivism by linking on to Goethe's conception of the human being as a natural-supernatural entity: 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. He thus became one of the first European philosophers to overcome the subject-object split that Descartes, classical physics, and various complex historical forces had impressed upon Western thought for several centuries. Though not well-known among philosophers, his philosophical work was taken up in the middle of the twentieth century by Owen Barfield (and through him influenced the Inklings, a group that included such writers as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) and at the beginning of the twenty-first century by Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind.

Possibility of a union of science and spirit
Steiner believed in the possibility of uniting the clarity of modern scientific thinking with the awareness of a spiritual world that lives in all religious and mystical experience. Steiner tried to create an approach to what he called the "inner life" that would use the careful, systematic methodology created by modern science, but turn its attention to the soul and spirit. Steiner identified mathematics, which attains certainty through inner experience rather than empirical observations, as the basis of his epistemology of spiritual experience.

Relationship to religion

Multicultural emphasis
Steiner was early in seeing the challenges of a multicultural society. He articulated the need for a spirituality that could respect and unite all religions and cultures (and spoke in this context of twelve equally valid religions or religious viewpoints).[citation needed] His line of thought can be summarized as follows:

Many people, especially those of Eastern cultures, see the need for a spiritual basis for a culture. Others, especially in the West, live in a materialistic framework that has achieved astonishing results, especially through the achievements of modern science, but has abandoned its spiritual roots. Steiner suggested that, without a reconciliation of these two, a clash of cultures would be inevitable. He suggested that the East (for Steiner, characteristically spiritually centered people and peoples) would only respect the West (characteristically people and peoples who focus on external reality and achievements) when a new spirituality arose in the West, a spirituality that united the achievements of both cultures.

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

Steiner emphasized, however, 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.

It is the being that unifies all religions, and not a particular religious faith, that Steiner saw as the central force in human evolution. This "Christ Being" is for 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, manifesting in all religions and cultures.

"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."

Divergence from conventional Christian thought
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; these are explicated in the article on Anthroposophy (see sub-section titled "Anthroposophy in Brief/Reincarnation and Karma").

Steiner differentiated three contemporary paths by which it is possible to arrive at Christ:

• Through heart-filled experiences of the Gospels; this is the historically dominant path but is now falling away.
• Through inner experiences of a spiritual reality; this is 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; this is the path people will tend to take in the future.

Steiner also differentiated 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. (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.
He emphasized 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.

The Christian Community
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." 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, as he saw anthroposophy as independent of any particular religion or religious denomination.

Reception of Anthroposophy

Notable supporters
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, Andrej Belyj, Josef Beuys, Wassily Kandinsky,Nobel Laureates Selma Lagerlöf and Albert Schweitzer, Andrei Tarkovsky and Bruno Walter.

Religious nature
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 anthroposophy was not a religion for Establishment Clause purposes; the case is under appeal. In 2000, a court case was brought in France against a government minister for claiming that anthroposophy was a cult; the court ruled that the minister's comments were defamatory.

Scientific basis
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.

"[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."
Anthroposophy's claim to a scientific basis has been rejected by Sven Ove Hansson on the basis that its ideas:

• are not empirically derived
• are neither reproducible nor testable

One author calls such objections untenable on the grounds that Steiner demonstrated that the experiences of pure thinking possible within the normal realm of consciousness are already experiences of non-sensory, non-physical reality, and that if such a realm exists, it is impossible to exclude the possibility of empirically grounded experiences of other supersensory content.[7] 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.

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.

Racism
Concerns have been raised that latent racism in anthroposophy exists today due to the unreserved adherence to the teachings of Rudolf Steiner by some followers of anthroposophy:

"...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."

The Anthroposophical Society in America objects to this claim:

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.