The impulse that motivated my search

Driven by links unsuspected at the time, I am irresistibly drawn to the Hagakure, the "Secret Book of the Samurai".

The Hagakure says it all, but in silence: the message is hidden between the lines, or "hidden by the leaves", to use the literal translation of the Japanese word "hagakure".

"The Hagakure says nothing about time or profit, nor does it encourage wasting time in a vague contemplation of emptiness. We live in the world and we react to events. The only question is: where do we choose to place ourselves?"

William S.Wilsons, Hagakure, the Book of the Samouraï.

"Somebody once said: "In the mausoleum of the Saint", there is the following poem:

If in our hearts

We follow the path of sincerity

Even without prayers

We will be protected by the gods.

What is this path of sincerity?"

A man replied to him thus: "You seem to like poetry. So I will answer you with a poem:

As everything in the world is only a deception,

Death is the only sincere thing."

"It is said that following the path of sincerity means behaving every day as if one were already dead."

"The Book, the one and only in my eyes: The Hagakure."

Yukio Mishima

The discovery in 1997 of the work of Rudolf Steiner

would turn my world view upside down, as well as my working and investigative methods.

RUDOLF STEINER, philosopher , scientist and educator , (1861-1925), has achieved world-wide fame as the originator of the Science of the Spirit known as Anthroposophy, and as a pioneer of genius in a variety of fields of learning.

"Steiner's gift to the world was a moral and meditative way to objective vision, a way appropriate to the psychological physiological constitution of Western man. If accepted in the spirit of humility, altruism and truthfulness in which it was given, it could bridge the existing cleft between a man's religious conviction and his intellect and will. It could add comprehension to our existing knowledge and thus revive the vision without which our generation will hardly find the solution to its problems."

Franz Winkler, M.D., Man the Bridge between Two Worlds.

"That the academic world has managed to dismiss Steiner's works as inconsequential and irrelevant, is one of the intellectual wonders of the twentieth century. Anyone who is willing to study those vast works with an open mind (let us say, a hundred of his titles) will find himself faced with one of the greatest thinkers of all time, whose grasp of the modern sciences is equaled only by his profound learning in the ancient ones."

Russell W. Davenport, The Dignity of Man.