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~ Click for Doyletics Home Page ~Rudolf Steiner for Research Guide to his WorksToday readers live in the midst of riches, which they neither value nor exploit, failing to realise that the application of attention is the magical act which transforms print and paper into bread and wine. And now, patient reader, read on! — Robert Cecil in his Introduction to The King's Son
Life is short and therefore precious, and we should all keep the company of the best people we can find, both in life and in books.
— Charley Reese
A good book should awaken the life of the spirit – not simply impart a certain quantity of information. Reading it should be an experience with inner shocks, tensions, and solutions. . . . When a book and an individual come into collision and there is a hollow sound, this need not be the fault of the book!
— Rudolf Steiner
(Click Steiner's Photo at Right for Short Bio)
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Author's Comment:
Many of you good readers have asked why I read so many Rudolf Steiner books, and here's why, so far as I know as of this date: I've just read and reviewed about 153 Steiner books, and there are 600 or so books by him extant, so I'm only about one fourth the way through in terms of volume. I'm beginning to see repetitions --- helpful ones because I understand the bases better each time when I encounter the same idea. And yet, every new book or lecture introduces one or several mind-boggling concepts that seem to spring wholly new out of Steiner! He's truly amazing.When I first began reading Steiner, it was like he was strumming a melody on a musical instrument. I listened, enjoyed, and was enlightened by the music.
Now when I read Steiner, it's like the instrument he is strumming is me. I hear the melodies and harmonies flowing out of me in ways I could not imagine, up until now.
My goal is to make Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science more approachable for humans of this new century by distilling his teachings in my fiery retort, then condensing and pouring the spirit-filled concentrate into my review pages which become like the score of an ethereal symphony.When you read my reviews of Steiner, you are joining the orchestral instruments pouring out the symphony Steiner is conducting through our living souls.
After reading a review, if you wish to read the entire text, it may be on-line, available for download at no charge in the Rudolf Steiner Archive. Click to Enter Archive.
Readers' Comments:
Subject: May, 2007 Comments from SUNY Students of Kevin Dann:
After my Guestbook had been FUBAR for about a year without giving any indication other than a lack of posts, I complained to the Guestbook service. Soon a flood of entries came pouring out. Among them were about two dozen emails from students of Prof. Kevin Dann's class at SUNY in Plattsburgh, NY. Here are some of them. Each one used the curious word "Pakwanonzian!!" When I took a bite out of a Reality Sandwich I found out that it is a Wonbanakiak greeting which means literally, "You look brand new to me!" To all new Good Readers of my A Reader's Journal, I offer this greeting, sincere, heartfelt, "Pakwanonzian!!" Below are a selection from the many replies I received from SUNY students. Thank you all.Subject: thanks cobbler!
We had to check this out for a class. After reading what I had to I got interested and now I find myself reading more and more. This is so awesome!
Jennifer, SUNYPakwanonzian!!
I loved your review on Rudolf Steiner's "The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations." The points about love and hate, evil as good out of place and remember the future it hums in the present were my favorite!
Ashlie, SUNY- I think you have really managed to make the works of Steiner come alive and really give people something to think about in regards to a more spiritual way of thinking. I skimmed through your review of The Guardian of the Threshold and I especially liked how you claimed what happenings in our life seem to be, to us, accidents, are actually actions planned out by our unconscious spirit for the best. It made me really think about my own life and the path that I have come down.
Thank you for such insightful information!!
Danielle, SUNY- Comments: Pakwanonzian! although i have only seen a picture of you..still brand new to me... awesome page.. very inlightening..
Timmy, from 'Dr. Dann's wild safari' at SUNY- Pakwanonzian! I thought that the portal of initiation was pretty interesting. thanks for writing about it so I could read it!
Evan, SUNY- Greetings,
I am a memeber of Kevin Dann's History 132 class. He gave us this link to do research on one of Rudolf Steiner's works. I read through the piece titled: The Karma of Untruthfulness. It was an interesting piece, and I enjoyed the thoughts of the spirtual aspects. Interesting and Informational site.
Brooke, SUNY- I just finished reading your review of "Self-Consciousness, GA# 23 by Rudolf Steiner The Spiritual Human Being." As one who has never read Steiner until recently, I find it fascinating that this man had so much clarity. Your review of Steiner's work makes it easier to understand what he is trying to impart to those with which he spoke. Thank you for the clarifications about human supersensory abilities.
Sara, SUNY- What a fantastic site, good interesting information. Thanks for having this site, great job!
Tim, SUNY
Bobby, It isn't even 8 AM yet, and your reviews have already helped me trismegistus! I've just written been inspired by your reporting of Steiner's "world boot" parable (from the Human & Cosmic Thought review) to hunt up some old shoe lasts from our ancient cobbler in Plattsburgh, and bring them (I should bring him too!) in to class this week. I have come at this "5 blind men" problem 100 ways all semester, and I don't think I could show it any more whimsically than this).
Kevin Dann, March 18, 2007Re: Jung & Steiner by Gerhard Wehr: I think the work you have done on your site, in general, and the work you have done on the book review focusing on Steiner and Jung, in particular, is monumental.
Finbarr Lismore, May 25, 2004Re: From Mammoths to Mediums by Rudolf Steiner: I finally got a chance to read your mammoth review, and what a review! Even though it was 33 pages long, I could have read forever of your comments and interpretations of this book. This book is most definitely a MUST READ!
Renee Lattimore, New Orleans, July 28, 2003Re: Omens of Millennium by Harold Bloom: I am patting myself (all 4 bodies) on the back for having suggested this Bloom book to you — funny, I gave the book a great deal more credit, just for the mere fact that he took up these sources and didn't roundly dismiss them. But you are absolutely right — literary criticism (especially practiced without an esoteric schema of the evolution of consciousness) is worthless. I loved the way you flipped the statistic of the 100 million millennialists on its head!
You went right for the jugular on Bloom's book, and I actually think that it's an important arena of thought because scholars of Bloom's breadth are just the sort who, after coming to Steiner through some revelation like Bloom's by Emerson, would get a lot out of anthroposophical interpretations of the Bible.
Your reviews continue to be mouth-watering for me — sweeter than watermelon, or blackberries (which I'm picking from the bushes hereabouts) — and without the seeds!
Kevin Dann, Vermont, July 22, 2003
Lewis Creek, Lost and FoundRE: From Jesus To Christ :Well done, Bobby. You are like the phantom forming these ideas for today's consciousness. I hope many people discover Steiner (and reality)from your work..
Kristina Anita Kaine, Australia, June 18, 2003RE: From Comets to Cocaine:What a great review! Some of the things that I didn't understand while reading the book have become clear now. I especially loved the end: 'coincidence or deep truth'.
Renee Lattimore, New Orleans, May 26, 2003Laws of Form by G. Spencer Brown is one of the seminal books of our modern era. Reviewer Bobby Matherne quotes enough of the juicy bits that, even though this is more personal reflections of its application to the Evolution of Consciousness than actual critical appraisal, it is a truly distinctive read.
May's Mastications December 17, 2002Thank you so much for Good Mountain Press. Good medicine!
While grazing through the website, I am struck by the extra care you have brought to the presentation of each review. I am thinking of the animation of the Burning Bush, the stained windows of the gospel writers, the awesome chart on the Two Jesus's with the review of Steiner's St. Luke, and the like. Such things speak to me of a reverence you have for the work and the reader: it all adds a quality of warmth to this all-too-cold Internet.
Sandy Sellers, Canada, December 12, 2002.Bobby; superbly written from your web site. Reading your essay/review on Steiner's teachings regarding the bridging work of Michael in the emerging age that will link the spiritual and physical worlds in the awareness of Humanity, creating, in effect a "permeable consciousness" , had that curious and unique effect that reading Steiner always has on me:
I'm not reading the page. I'm entering into the page. And further, I'm pausing peripherally around each word, gently diving into a meditative absorbsion on the quality of energy and meaning of the word; as if it conveyed potent living imaginative images saturated with occult truth and Myth-making power. I was reading in a kind of slow motion. I actually had to slow down so as to allow each word to "speak" to me. I had no choice! You had a captive reader...or should I say "seer" because each word seemed to invoke the power and reality of the Michael Stream in my own imaginative consciousness. It was almost like a transfer of energy. Perhaps it was. Great writing! Howard Weingarden September 1, 2002.
[Note: Howard Weingarden has a developed a following among people who appreciate the spiritual qualities in his works. Howard works with pencil, crayon, ballpoint pen, oils, acrylics and computer graphics to achieve a spectacular effect. Many of his works show the permeable aspect of the interweaving of the material and spiritual worlds. You can view some of his artworks on this page: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/1791/weingarden_3_thmb.html.]
Bobby, I just finished your review of Hidden Gospel. I really admire the way you find a balance between what the author says, letting the author speak without interpretation, then you bring your own interpretation in, often with relevant quotes from other books and insights from Steiner. That's hard to do well, but then I reckon balance is the hardest thing we do, anyway!
> He adds later that "To escape into light is not better than to continually
> rummage in darkness. Both light and darkness are needed." To this latter
> sentence, I cannot help but elaborate that he is not talking about some equal
> amounts of light and dark as some English speakers might naively interpret his
> words, but a rhythm of light and darkness in one's life.See, you let Klotz speak, then you illuminate his statement with a really apt one of your own. In this case you show you understand Zarathustra's teaching on light/darkness — that we seek the transformation, the illumination of darkness, not merely a fight against (a "making wrong") of darkness. Just great!
As to your reference to hakuna code, I often had Israeli students in my evolution of consciousness class at the Waldorf Institute (now Sunbridge College). When we'd be studying Genesis, they often brought wonderful wisdom from their study of ancient Hebrew, where each syllable of a word has its meaning(s), which then combine to form a multi-meaning word — Golgotha, for example. This resonates with Barfield's work on poetry, where he points out that before the intellect became supreme in our culture, words were expected to be heard on many levels, at least those of body, soul and spirit.
Thanks for a great read,
Hilmar Moore, Austin, Texas, July 31, 2002Dear Bobby, I continue to enjoy reading the Good Mountain Press Digests and Reviews. Dorothy Bowles, Professor in the College of Communications, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Feb. 2, 2002.
In my judgment Bobby has done a very fine review of my book, The Burning Bush. While obviously he doesn't touch every aspect of the book, he does a remarkably fine job I think of capturing some of the important thrusts and presenting them in a way that could well be attractive and helpful to some readers. Edward Reaugh Smith, Lubbock, Texas, Jan. 15, 2002.
Bobby in his Thoreau review — review is too small a term for the sort of engagement that he brings to this and all the books — has captured something essential about Thoreau, his deep humaneness. The pulse of quote and commentary seems much like a walk Thoreau might take — steady, measured, punctuated, brisk, rhythmic.
Kevin Dann Author of Lewis Creek, Lost and Found and currently working on a biography of Thoreau, Vermont, Jan. 6, 2002.Trying to grasp step by step Steiner's mind — a tough task — in my sense — through Edward R. Smith, and later I discovered Bobby Matherne's online comments - at least a readable humanist in the way of Michel de Montaigne.
Christian Paul Daniel Lenczner, my French friend on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, December 28, 2001.Bobby's review of "Twillinger's Voyage" sparkles with references bringing his wide ranging knowledge to bear on this science fiction story. He offers us a scientific insight about some space-environment assumptions used in the book, based on an incident that occurred at Atomic Energy Commission Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge. He lists some of the topics in Twillinger's that are parallelled in The Contender, a move of Hollywood messages. He explains how some of the ideas in the book are closely similar to the unified Bose-Einstein condensates of Danah Zohar in her book, The Quantum Self. He even digs in to the science-fictional 'Zini' explanation of how brains work and reminds us of the somewhat parallel explanation in Gerald Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS). As Bobby tells us, this is one of the best available models for how human consciousness evolves from the tabula rasa of the neuronal structure of the human brain. Both Edelman, and this science fiction story alike propose that when one hears a word, an entrance is provided by which consciousness can expand into dynamic electric fields in the brain. Bobby's discussion is objective and penetrating, but characteristicly he stimulates us readers to find out for ourselves by ending the review with a paradox:
We may fill our glass with fields and forces,
or with gods and spirits simply -
But unless we quaff them both,
Our glass is always half-full or half-empty.The novel is ambiguous too. After proposing a theory of brain function based on the mechanistic qualities of quantums, the book moves along to a scene where the aliens have a meeting easily recognizable as a religious service. With any luck these ambiguities will be resolved in the sequel to Twillinger's, now in the works.
Dan Turner, Pennsylvania, October 3, 2001Thank you for your work and willingness to share the fruit of your reading/spiritual practice with others. cheers,
Sandy Sellers, Ontario, Canada, September 16, 2001I read your review of my book The Incredible Births of Jesus this morning with much appreciation, thinking that it was both perceptively and skillfully done.
Edward Reaugh Smith , Lubbock, Texas, September 9, 2001While all the other reviews of my book seemed to smell of chloroform, Bobby's review had all the piquant scents of the bayou in it. Made me want to reread my own book!
Kevin Dann , Woodstock, Vermont, September 8, 2001I have considered myself very rich lately in reading your wonderful reviews. Including your latest on Thom-Thumb!
Bradford Riley, Atlanta, Georgia May 15, 2001I found the Steiner lecture review by you quite well done and interesting. My retention isn't great, but I remember impressions well. I felt as though I had read something important by Steiner and had it explained to me at the same time--a nice combination. John Coiro, Cyberspace, January 10, 2001
I found you on the former Jaerna Bridge site and linked over to your book reviews. You do a fabulous job with a difficult subject in Steiner. The Macrocosm and Microcosm review was spectacular!
P. S. I enjoyed your new reviews and was also wondering how I can get to some of the new ones (printed in green on your main page) that aren't on the Newsletter you e-mailed to me. Thanks!
Kent Hamaker, April 27, Cyberspace, 2000
Your review of the Galambos book [Sic Itur Ad Astra] is a real work of art. You have concentrated what was to me the greatest series of lectures I've ever experienced into the bare roots of believable fact. You have captured the logic of Galambos's talks in such a manner that it is easy to see that you not only have a perfect understanding of the subject matter be it morality, freedom, coercion but the resulting effects of each. Warren Liberty, Ukiah, California, July 16, 1999.
I just discovered your email regarding your review of Macrocosm and Microcosm, which I received in March but had allowed to linger unread in a folder. I just read the review and think it is one of your best ones yet. I loved that quote by Baal Shem Tov and too many other things to write of now.
Hilmar Moore, Austin, Texas, July 17, 2000
To Order a Copy of a Reviewed Steiner Book, Click on SteinerBooks Logo.
These books are all about going on. All the way. To our common destination. To which none of us wants to go ignorant and alone. Hence, into the dark, we write. — Nancy Mairs in Voice Lessons
For More Insight on Steiner's Esoteric Revelations, Click below:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Click Here to Go to WWW.DOYLETICS.COM Website