Our Connection with the Elemental World: Kalevala – Olaf Åsteson – the Russian People: The World as the Result of Balancing Influences

Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner #CW 158

by Rudolf Steiner, Simon Blaxland-de Lange (Translation)

7 lectures, 6 addresses; various cities, Jan. 1, 1912 – Dec. 31, 1914 (CW 158) The heart of this volume comprises Rudolf Steiner’s commentary on the elemental forces responsible for our earthly nature as human beings―forces that influence us through our membership of a national or geographical group. When such elemental forces are not recognized and understood, he states, they cause conflict and chaos. However, Steiner indicates an important accompanying task that calls on all of us to develop individuality, emancipating ourselves from the earthly influences underlying national and racial groups. These great themes are framed by Rudolf Steiner’s pioneering research into the two major Northern folk poems― Kalevala and The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson. The former tells of the elemental spirits who created the conditions for our earthly incarnation, whereas the Dream Song has to do with the drama of excarnation―the journey of the human soul after death. Linking these vast motifs is Steiner’s unique description of the mission and tasks of the Russian people and the contrast of their destiny to the North American people (who, he says, are "dominating the Earth for a brief period of increasing splendor"). Steiner explains how elemental beings, responsible for the balance of land and sea, have created conditions whereby various peoples are enabled to develop their gifts and fulfill their destinies. Thus, he speaks of Finland as the ancient conscience of Europe, Russia as the future bearer of the Christ-imbued Spirit Self, and the differing but complementary environments of Germany and Britain. Strikingly, he states, "No souls on Earth love one another more than those living in Central Europe and those living in the British Isles." Steiner also speaks of the necessary work of the luciferic and ahrimanic beings that collaborate to enable the solid spatial forms of our physical bodies. Likewise, they influence our etheric and astral bodies, facilitating thinking, feeling, and volition to be imbued with life and consciousness. This book is a translation from German of Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der elementarischen Welt. Kalewala – Olaf Åsteson – Das russische Volkstum – Die Welt als Ergebnis von Gleichgewichtswirkungen (GA 158).

288 pages, Paperback

Published January 20, 2017

About the author

Author also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...


Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,  differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.