Who Was Rudolf Steiner?: An Untold Story

Who was Rudolf Steiner?

Ask that same question, seriously and not superficially, of anyone, out of love―who are you, really?―and even a half-revealed corner of the full truth will throw open a window into the whole world, its awesome interconnectedness, its mysteries and beauty. The true answer can hardly be contained in a single book, a single biography.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner opened up a whole new way of grasping the significance and import of what we call world history, through the individual human beings who live it, and how it and they are related to and affected by the spiritual world.

It is individual human beings, ultimately, who live history and shape it, in their thinking, their feeling, their doing and sacrifice. This is obvious. However, if we recognize, or just entertain the notion, that reincarnation is real, the grand sweeping tapestry of human life on earth makes far more sense. To begin with, the significance of certain key individuals who appear again and again in the midst of this tapestry speak to a larger story, of humanity and its purpose, in a complex spiritual context that we are, in fact, fully capable of grasping.

Rudolf Steiner pointed out the way to know these things, to understand history in the light of reincarnation and karma, but of himself and his own role, his karmic biography, he seemed to say but little. 

Or did he?

One hundred years after Rudolf Steiner's death, Richard Ramsbotham has written what must be considered, at least for now, the definitive karmic biography of Rudolf Steiner. He has dared to answer the question of who Rudolf Steiner was, and is, out of a living relationship with this individuality, and by listening deeply―through the years―into the very words Rudolf Steiner spoke, which continue to tell us more than we thought we knew, or could know.

He has done this by living fully, not only with the past, but with the present moment just as much, fully awake to the dire spiritual situation of the twenty-first century, of the workings of Christ and His adversaries. What is revealed here in this book wholly embraces not only the past and the present moment, but shines both light and warmth toward the future, and toward the further working of this individual, for anyone who might wish to meet him, or know him better.

Richard Ramsbotham was born in Northumberland, England, in 1962. He has worked as a drama teacher, lecturer, theatre director, and writer. He is the author of: Who Wrote Bacon? William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and James I (2004); Rewinding the War [a play, co-written with Gino Paccagnella] (2014); An Exact Mystery: The Poetic Life of Vernon Watkins (2020) and The Burning of the Goetheanum [a play for voices] (2023). He has published numerous articles on current events, literature, and history for New View magazine and is the translator of The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner in English edition of Steiner’s Four Modern Mystery Dramas (CW 14). He lives in Stroud and has three children and two grandchildren. He is a co-director of Fourfold Living Arts, which brings together the performing arts with research into spiritual, cultural, and contemporary issues.