Anthroposophical ideas are vessels fashioned by love

  

Rudolf Steiner:  "The name anthroposophy bears is justified: it is not mere learning like any other. The ideas it presents and the words it uses are not meant as abstract theory. Anthroposophical ideas are not shaped in the way other kinds of learning have been shaping ideas for the past three or four centuries; words are not meant as they are elsewhere. Anthroposophical ideas are vessels fashioned by love, and man's being is spiritually summoned by the spiritual world to partake of their content. Anthroposophy must bring the light of true humanness to shine out in thoughts that bear love's imprint; knowledge is only the form in which man reflects the possibility of receiving in his heart the light of the world spirit that has come to dwell there and from that heart illumine human thought. Since anthroposophy cannot really be grasped except by the power of love, it is love-engendering when human beings take it in a way true to its own nature. That is why a place where love reigned could be built in Dornach in the very midst of raging hatreds. Words expressing anthroposophical truths are not like words spoken elswhere today; rightly conceived, they are all really reverential pleas that the spirit make itself known to men."

Source: January 23, 1923 GA 257