Anthroposophy- no easy read

We need to use our anthroposophical literature to gradually and rationally discover how we as human beings are meant to relate to the spiritual world. We are presented with a double opportunity to do so, first of all through the fact that it cannot be read without considerable mental effort.

I have always made sure of that, even though it has often been suggested that I make my writing more accessible to the general public. I have always resisted such suggestions because these things are just not meant to be popularized.

If we presented what we have to offer in our spiritual-scientific literature in all kinds of watered-down versions for the sake of popularizing it, we would simply be pandering to people's unwillingness to exert themselves, and asking for trouble at the same time. Attempts at loading up on spirituality in easy and thoughtless ways always lead to trouble. The effort we make in learning to understand something difficult to read is a kind of inner training and contributes to shaping our relationship to the spiritual world in the right way. 

It is an essential part of our literature, or at least it should be, that you really have to think in the most comprehensive way possible while taking in the information; your thinking has to become active. Everything you have at your disposal as a result of prior reading and experience must be brought into connection with the content of our anthroposophical writings.

-Rudolf Steiner