What is anthroposophy?
The goal of anthroposophy is to help humans evolve by developing our higher senses and abilities through learning and meditative practices. It is based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner and has applications in a wide range of disciplines from farming, education, medicine, arts, social development, banking, architecture and religion. Many consider anthroposophy a spiritual science because teachers are not revered as divine beings or gurus and their words are not to be followed in blind faith. All teachings, once taken in and understood, are to be explored and verified by each individual for their truth and benefit before acceptance and application.
Because the goal is to develop our supersensible perceptions, the practices and learnings are often related to subtle differences in our consciousness, thinking, feeling and will power and are not necessarily physical. Anthroposophy values individual freedoms, so each student is encouraged to follow what they are drawn to and pursue their own talents and abilities in finding a way to develop themselves further. To support this, anthroposophy offers different streams that guide student’s development through cognitive learning, the arts, and creation with the hands.
The human body
In order to understand anthroposophy, and develop our supersensible organs, we must start by looking into the makeup of the human body and our experience within it. While different perspectives offer valuable insights into what it means to be human, we’ll focus our introspection with Steiner’s division of a human into four different subtle bodies.
The first subtle body is the physical body, which we are quite familiar with through modern medicine and includes our bones, organs and the rest of our body. We use our physical body to live on planet Earth, find and eat food and interact with other physical bodies such as rocks, plants, animals and other humans.
The second body we’ll want to become aware of is the etheric body. This is the first body that is not physical (i.e. cannot be touched) as it represents the life energy that animates our physical body. The concept of life energy has been known to humanity for millenia; Ayurvedic medicine refers to it as prana, Traditional Chinese medicine calls it Qi [chi]. All living beings have an etheric body while they are alive and many alternative medicines focus on the health of the etheric body and the flow of life energy in order to maintain our overall wellbeing. It is associated with movement and with time, and is common to humans, animals and plants.
The third subtle body is called the astral body, and is often referred to as the soul. This body influences and animates the etheric body and is common to humans and animals. It has its origins in higher spiritual realms (the Greek word “aster” means star). These higher spiritual influences manifest themselves through our thinking, feeling and willpower, which can be thought of as anchor points through which the higher realms connect to humans. This idea was also known to ancient traditions; ancient Hebrews referred to it as thought-speech-action, Muslims and Greeks as head-heart-hands, and the Daoists as upper-middle-lower dantien. In the western world, psychology studies the astral body while a wide range of modern practices from mindfulness to leadership management incorporate it into their teachings. In order to keep it aligned with its true, healthy state which originates in the higher realms, humans need to sleep. Other meditative practices that bring full conscious awareness to our thinking feeling and willing further help us develop our astral bodies.
The fourth body is known as the ego or the “I”. It is the awareness we have of ourselves and is not related to the modern psychological concept of ego. This self-awareness is unique to humans (animals do not have it). The simplest way to feel this body is to think about and become aware of what you mean when you say “I”. This concept is not novel to Anthroposophy and has been written about in both the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible. Steiner describes this self awareness as a divine spark we have within us that is made up of the same substance as the divine powers of the world religions. Bringing this conscious awareness to our experiences, thoughts and feelings allows us to evaluate and influence our astral body. Through this process we tend to become aware of and describe our experiences, thoughts and feelings with language as well as recall them after much time has passed, so both speech and memory are thought of as functions of the Ego body.
Good vs. Evil
In modern times, religious and philosophical teachings tend to describe good and evil as polar opposites. In order to stay on the right path, people were trained to push themselves towards the good extreme and reject the temptations of the evil polarity.
Anthroposophy presents a modified view. Evil is not necessarily thought of as a polar opposite of good. Harmful forces can be multi-faceted and manifest themselves through different extremes which pull us away from our true being.
One of these extremes is known as Luciferic, and represents beings unbalanced toward the spiritual extreme. Beings under the Luciferic influence don’t value the physical life on Earth and pull people away into the unbalanced world of spirits. While not necessarily evil in its intentions, luciferic influences can be very detrimental to us. Those who succumb to luciferic temptations tend to not have their lives in order. Whether it’s their jobs, relationships with family and friends or their finances, they tend to neglect every-day aspects of life and can succumb to substance abuse in order to escape reality.
The other extreme is called Arhimanic, named after the Zoroastrian dark and destructive spirit Arhiman, and represents an unbalanced love of materialism with minimal acknowledgements of the spiritual world. People under arhimanic influence tend to value materialistic achievements above all else, and can justify immoral means of achieving them, even if they come at a cost to other humans. They also tend to lack patience and prefer to speed things up, prioritizing short-term gains over long-term consequences even at the cost of bringing chaos into the world.
Between these two extremes lies the path that properly balances spiritual and materialistic aspects of life and provides the best inspiration for humans. It is often referred to as the Michaelic path, named after archangel Michael. It’s important to note that this path is not a balance of Luciferic and Arhimanic influences, but a separate impulse that aims to help humans evolve in the best possible way by bringing into harmony the spiritual influences and aspects of our being with the bodily sensations and experiences we have in our Earthly lives. This path relies on selfless moral acts of people to help all human beings in their development, regardless of their gender, nationality, race or religion.