He had me at hello.

My initial encounter with Rudolf Steiner occurred on September 8, 1991. I picked off the library shelf a copy of The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita and began to read the first lecture:

"Our thoughts will penetrate to regions that will lead us to the portals of the eternal manifestation of the spiritual in the world. We shall speak about a subject that will apparently lead us far away in time and in space from the here and now. It will not on that account lead us less to what lives in the here and now, but rather to what lives just as much in all times and in all the places of the Earth, because it will bring us near to the secrets of the eternal in all existence. It will lead us to the ceaseless search of man for the wellsprings of eternity, where he may drink for the healing and refreshment of something in him which, ever since they gained understanding of it, men have considered all-powerful in life, namely, love. For wherever we are gathered together we are gathered in the name of the search for wisdom and the search for love. What we seek is extended out into space and can be observed in the far horizon of the Cosmic All, but it can also be observed in the wrestling soul of man wherever he may be."