Hartmann Angel Thinking

Consciousness, Meditation and Human Destiny
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-915776-34-1
Verlag: Temple Lodge Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 118 Seiten

Over the course of the last decades, there has been an increasing demand by people for spiritual experience - whether it involves elemental beings, past incarnations or encounters with angels. But how should we distinguish between reality and illusion in such perceptions, particularly when efforts are often focused on instantaneous experience? Is it really possible to build a scientific foundation for metaphysics today? And what role might thinking play in such a truly contemporary spirituality? There is a tradition, traceable to Aristotle and leading to Rudolf Steiner, that seeks to establish metaphysics as a science. Connecting with this noetic practise, Steffen Hartmann argues that the sure path of personal development begins with pure thought and meditation. Only then, under the right conditions, does it lead to spiritual experience. Through developing our mental faculties to the point where we can properly evaluate such experience, we build a new foundation for understanding the I, our essential core. Self-awareness of the I - in pure thinking - is the eye of the needle through which we should pass. In thought, we can even unite with the essence of the angels. By enriching our thinking, we can access - as conscious, mindful individuals - the realm of angelic beings. 'Angels are messengers of light. In this book the angels themselves are shining their light... in the writings of Steffen Hartmann.' - Johannes Greiner 'The strength of this text lies in its purposeful progression. It is like a guided tour up a mountain that - after a lot of effort - offers a wonderful panoramic view.' - Matthias Bideau, Die Drei

STEFFEN HARTMANN, born in 1976 in Freiburg im Breisgau, studied piano in Hamburg and participated as accompanist in master classes with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He has worked closely with the soprano Marret Winger. In 2007, he founded the MenschMusik Institute in Hamburg together with Matthias Bölts, a leading innovator in the field of contemporary music education. He has followed an inner meditative path based on anthroposophy since 1997 and has worked as a teacher of meditation. Steffen Hartmann regularly writes essays on salient topics connected to anthroposophical spiritual science, meditation and music. Together with Torben Maiwald, he founded the publishing house Edition Widar. He has led the Rudolf Steiner Haus Hamburg branch of the Anthroposophical Society since 2012. He is also the author of many books including The Michael Prophecy and the Years 2012-2033 (2020), and holds lectures and conducts seminars and concerts worldwide.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hartmann, Steffen

Leseproben

Foreword

A friend told me about a book she was reading, by Steffen Hartmann. There was ‘so much light in his writing,’ she exclaimed enthusiastically. My friend is a teacher and curative eurythmist. Her comment made me wonder: How do you write books with ‘much light’ in them?

I first met Steffen Hartmann in 2011. Before our meeting I had already read a few of his articles. They were written in such a way that I imagined the author to be rather old, serious and wise. The person I met, however, was younger than myself, warm and dynamic. As I got to know Steffen better I observed how quickly he is able to absorb and process thoughts. We started lecturing together. His presentations were always a great deal more succinct than mine. Steffen is gifted with an unusual degree of inner clarity. He never appears to struggle at all to conceive thoughts and put them into words. Time and again I noticed what my friend the eurythmist had pointed out about Steffen: a light-filled way of thinking. Things that others might express awkwardly or struggle to express emerge from his words with ease and transparency. It is this light that makes Steffen a true thinker.

Steffen’s first book, however, was not about his own thoughts but rather an effort to shine a light onto someone else’s thoughts. Wege zum Geist. Zum Lebenswerk von Anton Kimpfler (‘Paths towards the Spirit. Anton Kimpfler and his life’s work’, not translated) was the first of over forty titles from Edition Widar, the publishing house which Steffen founded in 2012 and is still running jointly with a fellow musician, Torben Maiwald. Just as the light at dawn shines on all things and not on itself, Steffen Hartmann let his own first light illuminate the legacy of another.

The fourth title released by Edition Widar was Von der Philosophie zur Anthroposophie (‘From Philosophy to Anthroposophy’, not translated)—a book that has shed new light on the efforts of many thinkers. Some chapters of this book had already been published in the form of articles. They explore the works of different philosophers and various philosophical themes within anthroposophy. In these pages, Steffen brings much clarity to a range of issues which previous writers had failed to elucidate (Carl Unger, Herbert Witzenmann and Sergei O. Prokofieff, among others). This is just the kind of writing that had made me think of its author as a wise old man. Von der Philosophie zur Anthroposophie relates to a later work of Steffen’s, Die Michael-Prophetie Rudolf Steiners (The Michael Prophecy and the Years 2012-2033. Rudolf Steiner and the Culmination of Anthroposophy, Temple Lodge Publishing, 2020) in a way that parallels the relation between Rudolf Steiner’s philosophical writings from the nineteenth century and his anthroposophical works in the twentieth century.

Next came Aus Widars Wirken (‘Widar and his works’, not translated), co-edited by Steffen Hartmann, Torben Maiwald and Anton Kimpfler. Widar is the spirit after whom Steffen’s publishing company was named. Following the precedent set by Ita Wegman and Nora Stein von Baditz in Aus Michaels Wirken (‘Michael and his works’, German edition: Stuttgart, 1959), Hartmann, Maiwald and Kimpfler gathered together a variety of texts that bear witness to the workings of Widar. Thus they shed light on a spiritual being of great significance for the survival of the earth and of humanity but who until now has remained relatively obscure.

After bringing Anton Kimpfler’s ideas into the light and after the collaborative effort of the Widar collection it was time for Edition Widar to turn to contemporary issues and questions about the future. Steffen and Anton Kimpfler put their lights together and co-authored Geistesgegenwart und Schöpferkraft (‘Spirit Presence and Creative Power’, not translated), a book that looks at today’s challenges in the light of Michael and focuses on Michael in the light of anthroposophically enlivened thinking.

Steffen’s next project followed quite organically: Die Michael-Prophetie Rudolf Steiners und die Jahre 2012-2033 (The Michael Prophecy and the Years 2012-2033. Rudolf Steiner and the Culmination of Anthroposophy, Temple Lodge Publishing, 2020). This book deals with the end of the last century and asks whether Rudolf Steiner’s prophecies for that time might in fact still lie ahead. Indeed, Steiner worked with a calendar beginning not in the year 1 AD but the year 33 AD—which suggests that the turn of the century and the beginning of the new millennium might actually not happen until 2033. Steffen explores how the much anticipated collaboration between Platonists and Aristotelians might come about at that time and what this could entail for those individuals who had worked with Rudolf Steiner in the early decades of the twentieth century but reincarnated quickly in order to further his work. A very fearless anthroposophical book and no mistake!

We tend to associate light with the sense of sight, and hearing and seeing are generally conceived as polarities. Yet in music there appears to be a form of audible light. The way great composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Wagner, Rachmaninov, Pärt and others shape their melodies; the way their musical themes follow upon one another; and the manner in which the overall structure of a piece of music is designed: all this is comparable to the skilful shaping and combining of light-filled thoughts. The more we can follow what is happening in a piece of music, the better we are able to connect the feeling-thinking we experience when listening to musical melodies with the experience we have when we create our own thoughts. Certainly, the light contained in Steffen Hartmann’s books can be explained in part by his being a musician. His little volume on music, Vom Schicksal der Töne in unserer Zeit (‘The destiny of tones in our times,’ not translated) helps musicians and amateurs alike to better understand the tension in contemporary music where we find ourselves suspended, as it were, between the sounds of heaven and the infernal din of sub-sensory electronics.

Since 2011 a close friendship has blossomed between Steffen Hartmann, Torben Maiwald and myself, nurtured by shared study tours and field trips. One day we conceived the project of co-authoring a trilogy on the subject of the Inner Child. In Benjamin oder Das Kind über den Wolken (‘Benjamin, Child Above the Clouds’, not translated) Steffen Hartmann bravely shares personal pre-birth memories of descending into earthly existence. Comparing this poetic, inward little book with Von der Philosophie zur Anthroposophie we catch a glimpse of the mystery around Steffen Hartmann’s character. Here we have a person who can expound with great authority and learning on the likes of Aristotle, Fichte, Hegel and other great thinkers, who for all that is so deeply in touch with his own inner child that he can listen to intentions and reflections from the sphere of the unborn and speak about them in simple words that touch our hearts. The contrast opens a window into the soul of an anthroposophical musician who is also dedicated to thinking the light. Readers may wish to explore all of Steffen’s aforementioned titles in order, listening for the melody of life that sounds in these works, each so different from the other yet all of them united in their kinship with the light.

In Benjamin we also hear about the frightful experiences those connected with Michael and anthroposophy had to endure in the spiritual world during the years 1943-1945. In this way, Benjamin offers a kind of ‘prelude in heaven’ to the Michael-Prophecy which, in turn, deals with realities and experiences that may await those same souls on the earth, in the years 2012-2033.

Seven years before our first meeting Steffen Hartmann had finished writing Wesen und Erscheinung. Zugleich ein Versuch, Mensch und Engel zu denken. (‘On Being and Appearance: Exploring the conceptual dimensions of humans and angels’). Selected chapters appeared in the February, March and April issues of the anthroposophical magazine, Die Drei (2005). I feel so very pleased that, after repeated encouragements, Steffen Hartmann has finally agreed to publish this book as a whole. Without doubt his style has changed since. Steffen writes more simply now, more directly, more to the point. At that time though, he still adopted the language of philosophy, donning it like a garment one has to wear in order to be taken seriously in certain quarters. Nowadays he speaks more readily by his own lights, from his own heart, and from his own personal experience. At the time, he helped his readers with infinite patience to climb the steps he had laid out so carefully towards those higher regions where thinking and spiritual encounter become one. If we are ready to accept the premise of the book and to follow its pathways inwardly we will receive a very wholesome reward: the thorough cleansing and focusing of our mind. Steffen asks us to really think along and he makes us think hard—but thanks to the author’s guiding hand we eventually arrive at our destination: a meeting with angels. We begin to understand how angels think, how humans relate to the angels, and how angels relate to us.

Much of what is written these days about angels is questionable—sometimes tacky, absurd, or in poor taste, often impossible to follow because lacking clarity of thought. Steffen Hartmann’s angel book is different. It is...