The Culture of Selflessness
Rudolf Steiner, The FifthGospel, and the TIme of Extremes
At the heart of Rudolf Steiner's teaching is a fundamental spiritual-ethical practice: selflessness. Aware of the catastrophes that lay ahead, Steiner called on his students to a "culture of selflessness" as the antidote to egotism. Presciently, he spoke of great human, earthly sufferings to come and of the spiritual necessity to participate in the misfortunes of others, to feel the pain of others as one's own, as a path of " true selflessness" that is also a path to the true "I". At the time, this fell on deaf ears, but the events of the last century and the beginning of this have made it incontrovertible.
Peter Self gives us a first glimpse of the depth and wisdom of these teachings on selflessness. TO begin, he focuses on Steiner's lectures on the Fifth Gospel. Centered on the life of Jesus, these lectures highlight a single theme - selfless dovetion and freely chosen sacrifice. Thus, we are all called to an "imitation of Jesus" - to practice what he lived as the path to the Christ in us.
Then Dr. Self addresses the nature of the "culture of selflessness" in general, and focuses on three particuular examples: Ita Wegman, Karl König, and Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose resistance to Hitler.
Finally, he turns to consider Rudolf Steiner himself, whose like Marie Steiner described as "a like of voluntary sacrifice." Others spoke of his "selfless devotion" and his ability to recreate another in himself. His spiritual reserach similarly depended upon the ability to be selflessly, lovingly receptive. Such selfless and loving receptivity is equally the path we must take to understand his teachings as well as to encounter his spiritual being today.
This book is a translation of Die Kultur der Selbstlosigkeit. Rudolf Steiner, das Funfte Evangelium und das Zeitalter der Extreme (Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach, 2006).
90 pages.
