Spiritual Ecology

Today we face increasing environmental challenges, from climate change and extreme weather patterns to deforestation, threats to animal species, and ongoing farming and food-supply crises. Virtually every day brings new alarming reports. How are we to respond, especially if we wish to take a broader, spiritual view of these events?

Steiner’s work is full of important, far-sighted perspectives on our relationship as human beings with the natural world. Indeed, his insights are more relevant today than they were in his time. Steiner offers us a new, conscious equilibrium with nature; we are not entitled simply to exploit the Earth, but neither should we view ourselves as devastating irritants on Earth’s surface. We are an integral part of the evolving natural world from which we arise. This world surrounds us, and we can rediscover ourselves within it, just as we can find all of nature transformed within us.

In the extracts compiled in this volume―presented with commentary and notes by Matthew Barton―Steiner discusses human perception, the Earth, water, plants, animals, insects, agriculture, and natural catastrophes. Spiritual Ecology offers a wealth of original thought and spiritual insight on the future of the Earth and humanity.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was born in the small village of Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Croatia), where he grew up. As a young man, he lived in Weimar and Berlin, where he became a well-published scientific, literary, and philosophical scholar, known especially for his work with Goethe's scientific writings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he began to develop his early philosophical principles into an approach to systematic research into psychological and spiritual phenomena. Formally beginning his spiritual teaching career under the auspices of the Theosophical Society, Steiner came to use the term Anthroposophy (and spiritual science) for his philosophy, spiritual research, and findings. The influence of Steiner's multifaceted genius has led to innovative and holistic approaches in medicine, various therapies, philosophy, religious renewal, Waldorf education, education for special needs, threefold economics, biodynamic agriculture, Goethean science, architecture, and the arts of drama, speech, and eurythmy. In 1924, Rudolf Steiner founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world. He died in Dornach, Switzerland.

Matthew Barton is a translator, editor, teacher, and poet, and taught kindergarten for many years at the Bristol Waldorf School. His first collection of poems was Learning To Row (1999). He has won numerous prizes for his work, including an Arts Council Writer's Award and a Hawthornden Fellowship.