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WorkRudolf Steiner

Theosophy

Steiner's map of the human being in nine members, of the soul's journey after death, and of the path to seeing it for oneself.

by Rudolf Steiner279 passages held

  • German, the original language
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Original title
Theosophie
First published
(aged 43)
Original language
German

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Overview

The first edition, published in Berlin in 1904, was dedicated to the spirit of Giordano Bruno, the Italian philosopher burned for heresy in Rome in 1600, and later editions dropped the dedication. Rudolf Steiner wrote Theosophie two years after becoming General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, and it is his attempt to set out the teaching of that movement in his own order and his own words, as knowledge rather than belief. The book opens on Fichte, who told his Berlin audience in 1813 that his doctrine required a new inner sense, and Steiner claims that such a sense can be developed. What follows is a description, in Steiner's terms, of what that sense perceives. The human being, he holds, is body, soul and spirit, and each divides further, nine members in all: three of the body, among them an invisible life body, three of the soul and three of the spirit. The spirit returns to earth in one life after another, and Steiner argues for this by analogy with biology: a body inherits its shape from its ancestors, but each person's spirit is a species of its own, and so its biography can only be explained by an earlier life of that same spirit. He then describes the soul's passage after death through a soul world and a spirit land, the thought-forms and the coloured aura he says the trained seer perceives around a person, and finally the path of exercises by which anyone may learn to see these things. He revised the book five times, the last in 1922, and it went through twenty-one editions before his death. He kept its title even after he broke with the Theosophical Society in 1913 and renamed his teaching anthroposophy.

Key concepts

What are the nine members of the human being in Theosophy?

Three of the body, three of the soul and three of the spirit: the physical body, the life or ether body and the soul body; the sentient soul, the mind soul and the consciousness soul; spirit self, life spirit and spirit man. Because some members overlap, the book says, they can also be counted as seven. The I, dwelling in the soul, holds them together.

What is the life body, or ether body?

The member that, in Steiner's account, keeps the physical body from falling apart into mere chemistry while it lives. Minerals have only a physical body; plants, animals and human beings also have a life body, which shapes and sustains matter through growth and reproduction. At death, he writes, it leaves the physical body, and what remains then follows only the laws of the mineral world.

What are the soul world and the spirit land?

The two regions, in Steiner's description, through which a human being passes between death and a new birth. In the soul world, ordered in seven regions from burning desire upward, the soul is freed from cravings still bound to the body, which cannot be satisfied without it. In the spirit land the spirit, released from those ties, works over the fruits of its past life and prepares the next.

Why is each human being called a species of their own?

Because, the book holds, no general law of a kind accounts for an individual biography. An animal's form and behaviour are explained by its species, which heredity passes on; in a human being the individual itself plays that part. And as a species form needs descent to explain it, the individual spirit needs a descent of its own, which the book finds in an earlier life.

What is the aura as the book describes it?

A cloud of colours that, in Steiner's account, the trained seer perceives around a human being, expressing the life of the soul. Among his examples, passions show in reddish tones and devotion in blue, and the aura shifts as feeling and character change. He presents it as observation rather than symbol, and asks the reader to hold it in judgement until it can be tested.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Body, Soul and Spirit

What is a human being made of, if not only a body? The book answers with a map of nine members, and places the self between what the body receives and what the spirit grasps.

In Steiner's account a person meets the world in three ways: through the body, which receives impressions; through the soul, which turns them into feelings of its own; and through the spirit, which grasps what holds true whatever anyone likes. Each divides again: physical body, life body and soul body; sentient soul, mind soul and consciousness soul; spirit self, life spirit and spirit man. The I lives in the soul as its centre. A true thought, the book argues, is true independently of whoever thinks it, and in grasping it the soul touches spirit.

  • soul
  • spirit
  • human nature
  • embodiment
  • body
  • consciousness
  • selfhood
  • individuality
  • emotion
  • thought
  • memory
  • reason
  • truth

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One Life After Another

Why is a person born with the gifts and burdens they have? The book argues that heredity explains the body, but a biography makes sense only as the continuation of an earlier life of the same spirit.

The argument starts in biology. An animal's form is explained by its species, a human body by its ancestors. But each human being, Steiner holds, is a species of their own, with a biography no ancestor accounts for; the spirit that shapes it must come from an earlier life of that same spirit, as the body comes from forebears. What a person does, he holds, returns to them as fate in a later life. Between lives, in his account, the soul passes through a soul world where its cravings are worn away, and then through a spirit land.

  • reincarnation
  • karma
  • fate
  • afterlife
  • spiritual worlds
  • desire
  • life
  • metaphysics

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A Knowledge Anyone Can Test

Can claims about unseen worlds be anything but belief? The book insists they can be followed and checked by ordinary sound thinking before anyone sees for themselves, and ends with a path for learning to see.

Steiner opens on Fichte, who told his audience that his teaching required a new inner sense, and claims that such a sense can be trained. Everything the book goes on to describe, the thought-forms, the aura whose colours he says the trained seer perceives, the regions of the soul world, is offered for testing rather than faith: sound judgement, he argues, can follow the account before it can confirm it. The closing path asks for inner calm, reverence and a feeling for truth before any vision, and warns off anyone who seeks only sensation.

  • perception
  • epistemology
  • spiritual perception
  • spiritual development
  • knowledge
  • spiritual knowledge
  • aura
  • spirituality
  • theosophy

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Within this work

passages held
279
distinct concepts
294
by passages held, corpus-wide
#267

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “soul” and “spirit”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
soulspirit19
epistemologyperception11
afterlifesoul10
epistemologyspiritual perception10
emotionperception9
perceptionsoul9
reincarnationsoul8
afterlifespirit6
perceptionspirit5
reincarnationspirit5
afterlifereincarnation4
emotionsoul4
emotionspiritual perception2
epistemologyreincarnation2
afterlifeemotion1
afterlifeepistemology1
afterlifespiritual perception1
epistemologysoul1
perceptionspiritual perception1
soulspiritual perception1
spiritspiritual perception1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1891 Die Grundfrage der Erkenntnistheorie (Die Grundfrage der Erkenntnistheorie mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre)

    A doctoral thesis and the groundwork for The Philosophy of Freedom, though most readers know it only through the 1892 book that absorbed it.

     DE
  2. 1894 The Philosophy of Freedom (Die Philosophie der Freiheit)

    The philosophical centre of Steiner's work, written in his Weimar years before any theosophy, and the book he kept sending later readers back to.

     DE
  3. 1895 Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom (Friedrich Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit)

    Written between The Philosophy of Freedom and the Goethe book, while Steiner still counted himself among Nietzsche's allies and before his dealings with the Nietzsche Archive turned sour.

     DE
  4. 1897 Goethe's World View (Goethes Weltanschauung)

    The last book of Steiner's Weimar years and the summing-up of his work as Goethe's scientific editor; The Philosophy of Freedom supplied its theory of knowledge.

     DE
  5. 1901 Mystics of the Renaissance and Their Relation to Modern Thought (Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens)

    The first book to come out of Steiner's lectures for the theosophists, still written in the voice of the naturalist philosopher of the 1890s; Christianity as Mystical Fact followed from the next course.

     EN
  6. 1902 Christianity as Mystical Fact (Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache und die Mysterien des Altertums)

    The book that marks Steiner's turn from philosophy to esoteric Christianity, given first as lectures to the Berlin theosophists in the months before he became their leader.

     EN
  7. 1904 How to Know Higher Worlds (Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?)

    The practical companion to Theosophy: that book describes what the trained seer claims to see, this one the training that is meant to lead there.

     DE
  8. 1904 Theosophy (Theosophie) you are here DE
  9. 1910 An Outline of Occult Science (Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß)

    The fullest single statement of Steiner's cosmology, begun inside the theosophical movement and revised under anthroposophy through four prefaces from 1909 to 1925.

     DE
  10. 1911 The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind (Die geistige Führung des Menschen und der Menschheit)

    Steiner's second book on the figure of Christ, nine years after Christianity as Mystical Fact, and one that carries the account far deeper into esoteric claims.

     EN
  11. 1919 The Threefold Commonwealth (Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft)

    Composed for the months after the German revolution, and Steiner's chief written statement on society; it reached English readers within a few years as The Threefold Commonwealth.

     DEEN
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