The Light of The “I”: Guidelines for Meditation

by Georg Kühlewind; Lindisfarne Books, 2008, 75 pgs. Review by Frederick J. Dennehy

Of all Rudolf Steiner’s works, the most important to Georg Kühlewind was The Philosophy of Freedom, or as he preferred it titled, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. Nearly every book he wrote may be viewed as a response to Steiner’s injunction in that seminal work to experience —to realize—our own spiritual path.

The Light of the “I” was written in English—the only one of Kühlewind’s works that was, to my knowledge. Like most of his later writings it is brief, and was composed in a meditative state. It is a practical guide, a “how-to” book in the finest sense, designed to help his readers find the inner path and stay on it.

In the last thirty years, no anthroposophist has written with more erudition and ease on the epistemological and ontological foundations of anthroposophy than Georg Kühlewind. Witness, as only one example, his Logos-Structure of the World—as radical and profound a work of philosophy as was produced in the latter part of the twentieth century. But while he was as able as any of his contemporaries to present a dialectical exposition or defense of the inner path of anthroposophy, Kühlewind’s preferred focus was not argument but praxis. In his daily life he was always ready to serve as a mentor, a guide, and a friend to meditants attempting to achieve the meditative life, to practice what Rudolf Steiner called “the only really fully free deed possible in this human life,” the only way in this world to become “completely free.”

For those who were fortunate enough to attend workshops and study groups with him, reading The Light of the “I” will be a remembrance. So many who attended those sessions would not have thought to take notes at any other similar gathering. They would break that rule with Georg, however; then, puzzling over their own scribblings later that night or early the next morning, would ask other participants for their notes unless they were asked first. But what was conveyed in those privileged meetings was, in Kühlewind’s words, “vertical,” directed toward the source of meaning, and note taking is “horizontal,” that is, broken, associative, and object-directed. It is as if, in The Light of the “I,” we are finally given the perfect set of notes, horizontal and vertical, beginning with ordinary consciousness and leading up toward the source.

No one should read The Light of the “I” without first reading the introduction by Christopher Bamford, who presents Georg Kühlewind personally, provides keys to his relationship to The Philosophy of Freedom, and emphasizes Steiner’s aim in that book not to create a universal methodology, but rather to show how he himself had “walked” the “inner path.” The Philosophy of Freedom was not didactic but provocative, urging every reader to find his or her own path—to walk, as Antonio Machado said, like Jesus on the water. Mr. Bamford eases newcomers into Kühlewind’s arresting, perhaps initially off-putting, non-dialectical style. Kühlewind’s injunction is to act—to begin on an inner path and then make that path our own.

The structure of the book is simple. The first section, “What Are We Looking For?” is a meditatively sequential presentation of the central insight of The Philosophy of Freedom, transposed into Kühlewind’s own vocabulary of “attentiveness,” “emptiness,” “the witness,” and the “I Am.”

The second section, “Exercises,” is a detailed, practical guide to the development of our attention through “concentration” exercises. Kühlewind presents not one but a multitude of possible practices, advice on how to cope with distractions, and finally, in prose that smiles at our tendency toward dutiful imitation, hard will, and “cramped” effort, a gentle reminder to be playful.

The third section is the fruit of his own forty years of meditation, not only the textual meditation for which he is best remembered, but symbolic image meditation and perceptual meditation. While it is tempting to say that this is the end of the path, it is in fact where we must always be—“in beginning.”

Kühlewind ends his book with a personal afterword and a sequence of meditative sentences that may be worked with together or separately.

Books on the inner life have been plentiful, even fashionable, for some time. These books typically trace a predictable narrative of awakening to inspiration, often characterized by generalizations, a loftiness of tone, and a depiction of inner bliss.

You won’t find that here. This book is for readers who want to do anthroposophy rather than hear about it. Kühlewind outlines paths to the source through the humblest of methods and the simplest of exercises. What other writer would point the way to the kingdom of heaven through concentrated attentiveness to the distinction between “that” and “this”? For those who take the doing of anthroposophy seriously, for those who understand the inner path to be not an object of interest but a need, this is a book to read, to reread, and to keep close at hand.

Georg Kühlewind gave so very much to so very many. This is the last of his written gifts.

Georg Kühlewind, by Dan Marshall