P. Blavatsky with the early esoteric writings of Steiner (e.g.,
An Outline of Esoteric Science of 1909), it is more accurate to say that anthroposophy is continuous with the entire Western esoteric tradition, especially the esoteric teachings of Egypt, Greece, Johannine Christianity, and Rosicrucianism.
Steiner's most succinct characterization of anthroposophy appears in the opening paragraphs of Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, which he wrote in 1924, during the last months of his life:
- Anthroposophy is a path of knowing (thinking) to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe. It arises as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need.
- Anthroposophy is communicated knowledge that is gained in a spiritual way. For at the very frontier where the knowledge derived from sense-perception ceases, there is opened through the human soul itself the further outlook into the spiritual world. (Steiner, 1973, p. 13)
From his first systematic work, The Philosophy of Freedom (1984), until his last writings and lectures in 1924 Steiner sought to exemplify, and to enable others to attain, spiritual, or sense-free, knowledge. Anthroposophy may be understood as the discipline of seeing the inner, or spiritual, core of every reality, even realities that seem to be grossly material.
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