As a spiritual basis for the refounded movement, Steiner wrote a Foundation Stone Meditation which remains a central meditative expression of anthroposophical ideas.

The Second World War temporarily hindered the anthroposophical movement in most of Continental Europe, as the Anthroposophical Society and most of its daughter movements ( e. g. Steiner / Waldorf education ) were banned by the National Socialists ( Nazis ); virtually no anthroposophists ever joined the National Socialist Party.

Steiner believed results of this form of spiritual research should be expressed in a way that can be understood and evaluated on the same basis as the results of natural science: " The anthroposophical schooling of thinking leads to the development of a non-sensory, or so-called supersensory consciousness, whereby the spiritual researcher brings the experiences of this realm into ideas, concepts, and expressive language in a form which people can understand who do not yet have the capacity to achieve the supersensory experiences necessary for individual research.

Steiner emphasized that he considered this movement, and his role in creating it, to be independent of his anthroposophical work, as he wished anthroposophy to be independent of any particular religion or religious denomination.

While claims of racial bias in the writings of Rudolf Steiner and Alice Bailey were made, Bailey was firmly opposed to the Axis powers ; she believed that Adolf Hitler was possessed by the Dark Forces, and Steiner emphasized racial equality as a principle central to anthroposophical thought and humanity's progress.

In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War One, Steiner worked to establish various practical endeavors, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.

His work also has its roots in the anthroposophical architecture of Rudolf Steiner.

Steiner saw eurythmy as a unique expression of the anthroposophical impulse:

While the Society was oriented toward an Eastern and especially Indian approach, Steiner was trying to develop a path that embraced Christianity and natural science.

Waldorf education ( also known as Steiner or Steiner-Waldorf education ) is a humanistic approach to pedagogy based upon the educational philosophy of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy.

During this period, Steiner maintained an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and basing his spiritual research and teachings upon the Western esoteric and philosophical tradition.

Steiner was also strongly influenced by Goethe's phenomenological approach to science.

Steiner also founded a new approach to artistic speech, or " speech formation ", and drama.

From the late 1910s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine.

Steiner responded with a lecture series on an ecological and sustainable approach to agriculture that increased soil fertility without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884 and 1897, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially phenomenological in nature, rather than theory-or model-based.

In Steiner ’ s approach to the astrological ages, each age is exactly 2, 160 years.

Steiner ’ s approach is very similar to that of Terry MacKinnell, who hypothesizes that the basis of the astrological ages is the heliacal rising constellation instead of the Hipparchan vernal point which also places his rectification almost half a sign in advance ( 15 degrees ) of the common rectifications similar to Steiner.

In the Kurschner edition of Goethe's works, the science editor, Rudolf Steiner, presents Goethe's approach to science as phenomenological, and lays the groundwork for a holistic epistemology in the books The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception and Goethe's World View ,.

In the 1970s and ' 80s, Steiner was a founder and practitioner of Radical Psychiatry, a new approach to psychotherapy based in a social theory ( of alienation ) rather than a medical one ( of individual pathology ).

Biodynamic farming is an approach based on the esoteric teachings of Rudolf Steiner.

This approach is associated particularly with the work of such scholars as Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van Parijs, Peter Vallentyne, Michael Otsuka, and David Ellerman.

From 1900 on, thanks to the positive reception given to his ideas, Steiner focused increasingly on his work with the Theosophical Society becoming the secretary of its section in Germany in 1902.

In 1923, faced with differences between older members focusing on inner development and younger members eager to become active in the social transformations of the time, Steiner refounded the Society in an inclusive manner and established a School for Spiritual Science.

Steiner began using the word to refer to his philosophy in the early 1900s as an alternative to theosophy, the term for Madame Blavatsky's movement, itself from the Greek, with a longer history with a meaning of " divine wisdom ".

In Theosophy, Steiner suggested that human beings unite a physical body of a nature common to ( and that ultimately returns to ) the inorganic world ; a life body ( also called the etheric body ), in common with all living creatures ( including plants ); a bearer of sentience or consciousness ( also called the astral body ), in common with all animals ; and the ego, which anchors the faculty of self-awareness unique to human beings.

This is a pedagogical movement with over 1000 Steiner or Waldorf schools ( the latter name stems from the first such school, founded in Stuttgart in 1919 ) located in some 60 countries ; the great majority of these are independent ( private ) schools.

Towards the end of Steiner's life, a group of theology students ( primarily Lutheran, with some Roman Catholic members ) approached Steiner for help in reviving Christianity, in particular " to bridge the widening gulf between modern science and the world of spirit.

Though Rudolf Steiner studied natural science at the Vienna Technical University at the undergraduate level, his doctorate was in epistemology and very little of his work is directly concerned with the empirical sciences.

Eurythmy, developed by Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner-von Sivers, combines formal elements reminiscent of traditional dance with the new freer style, and introduced a complex new vocabulary to dance.

Along with such composers as Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman and Miklós Rózsa, Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films.

In 1939, Steiner was borrowed from Warner Bros. by David O Selznick to compose the score to Gone with the Wind.

Along with Clark Gable, Steiner was one of the few nominees for Gone with the Wind that did not win.

Steiner received his next Oscar nomination for the 1940 film The Letter, his first of several collaborations with legendary director William Wyler.

In 1954, RCA Victor asked Steiner to prepare and conduct an orchestral suite of music from Gone with the Wind for a special LP, which was later issued on CD .< ref >

In his book review, George Steiner compared Pirsig's writing to Dostoevsky, Broch, Proust, and Bergson, stating that " the assertion itself is valid ... the analogies with Moby-Dick are patent ".

In 1891, Steiner earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock in Germany with a thesis based upon Fichte's concept of the ego, later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge.

Steiner remained with the archive until 1896.

Many subscribers were alienated by Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair and the journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist John Henry Mackay.

It was also within this society that Steiner met and worked with Marie von Sivers, who became his second wife in 1914.

Beginning in 1919, Steiner was called upon to assist with numerous practical activities ( see below ), including the first Waldorf school, founded that year in Stuttgart, Germany.

Together with Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Rudolf Steiner developed the art of eurythmy, sometimes referred to as " visible speech and visible song ".