## Metadata - Author: [[Gary Lachman ]] - Full Title: Rudolf Steiner - Category: #books ## Highlights - Steiner’s basic insight, the one from which all his other work develops, is the autonomy of the mind, the recognition that consciousness and the I are irreducible realities, spiritual realities, and that our inner world has the power to grasp experience, as he says in one lecture, “in the same way that we can grasp tables and chairs.”5 Steiner calls this “active thinking,” and if there is one thing that he wanted to convey it’s the importance of making our thoughts and our thinking come alive. ([Location 136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002UZDTEM&location=136)) - Steiner did tell Schuré that the Master gave him some advice on what he now clearly saw as his life’s mission, to overcome the materialist spirit of the nineteenth century. “To overcome the enemy,” the Master said, “you must begin by understanding him. You can only become the conqueror of the dragon by slipping into his skin.”7 Steiner understood this to mean that if he was to show the errors of materialism and bring a new vision of reality in harmony with the facts of the spirit world to mankind, he would first have to grasp thoroughly the very ideas he wished to transcend. ([Location 806](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002UZDTEM&location=806))