Robert M. Walter

In 2000 one of the leading Polish newspapers published an article by Polish psychologist, psychotherapist and author Wojciech Eichelberger [pl], in which Eichelberger described the meeting with Robert Walter as the moment when he came to believe in astrology. Both men agreed to carry out a simple experiment: Eichelberger supplied Walter with hours, dates, places of birth and sex of three people who were his patients without revealing their names. Three weeks later the men met again and each of them read his analysis of those people. Eichelberger admitted with astonishment that two of Walter's analyses were as accurate as his own. "I could not believe my ears, hearing that a man who had never seen the people he talked about presented complex, intimate details of their lives and dates of the most important events of their lives and in elegant language described the essence of their psychological problems".

It is important to note that Walter did not restrict his esoteric interests to anthroposophy. He became also a proficient astrologer and was regarded as one of the leading authorities in this area in Poland. One of his aspirations was to formulate the cognitive conditions under which astrology could again become a field of university research. He wanted to enable the dethroned former "queen" of sciences to enter again into the circle of investigations of the highest scientific quality, and protect it against amateurism which breeds its popularity from ignorance and prejudices of the masses. Another of his strivings in this field was to reconcile astrological and psychological diagnosis of personality. He was of the opinion that both disciplines produce similar diagnoses though use different concepts. He also authored a synthetic astrological typology which he presented in a lecture to the Polish Psychological Society and which was published posthumously in 1994.

Walter's approach to spirituality took a significant shift towards the end of his life. As noted before, Walter was not only profoundly familiar with Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, indeed, in Poland he was recognized as the supreme authority in this area, but he also achieved his insight into the spiritual world pursuing the methods described by Rudolf Steiner. Indeed, he maintained that he had achieved this insight in order to verify Steiner's claims. "Someone had to do it" he once said. Yet towards the end of his life, beginning perhaps in the 1970s, he seems to have begun to question Steiner's characterization of the relationship between Christ and human beings. Christ and His role in the evolution of humanity is undoubtedly central for Steiner, indeed, he describes the "Mystery of Golgotha" as the pivotal point of that evolution, as the event which gives meaning to the whole earthly existence of humanity, yet the being of Christ is conspicuously absent on the path of anthroposophical initiation and appears to the initiate only at the very end of his or her efforts. Walter put his finger on this fact in a questioning way. In a private conversation he once said:

Walter was untiring in his readiness to help. Asked once until when one could visit him on a given day he replied: "Until midnight, because later it is already the next day". Yet he was not only involved in personal destinies of people surrounding him. He was equally active on the social level: from its founding meeting in 1965 until his death he was the chairman of the Homeopathic Society in Poland, a councillor of the Komorow Regional Council, a member of the steering committee of the local branch of the Warsaw Committee for Prevention of Alcoholism, member of the Circle of Friends of the Library of Maria Dabrowska and many other organizations. He was responsive to all forms of needs of the people in his surroundings, including their physical needs. In order to come to terms with all his duties he would sleep little. He would go to bed at midnight or even later and get up at five.

Walter health improved substantially in Arlesheim and when he returned to Poland and Komorow in 1959 he was able to lead a more or less normal life again. The following years, although sometimes difficult on the financial side, proceeded in a more regular fashion without great, unpleasant, external blows of fate. Unfortunately, Walter's health quickly returned to "normal", i.e. it deteriorated under the pressure of the burden of work: Walter would spend ten hours a day in the laboratory although gradually, with age, he was only able to work less and less efficiently as he progressively lost strength. A few years after the Arlesheim period Komorow became populated once again by knowledge seekers, for whom Walter straightened their life's paths and to whom he gave his advice.

In 1956 Walter's financial situation was so bad that he was forced to start selling parts of his library and he seemed to be genuinely downcast. Fortunately in August 1958 he finally obtained state financial support and was able to travel to Switzerland. His time in Arlesheim was free from financial concerns and devoted exclusively to physical healing and spiritual growth. He also attempted to establish business contacts, which, however, proved not particularly successful. Far more significant was his inner development. According to an entry in his diary of 28 September 1958 he then experienced what is described in anthroposophical literature as the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold: a spiritual being who prohibits conscious entry into the spiritual world to people who have not mastered their desires and emotions.

In a letter to his mother, written in January 1955, he stated:

Walter was sent to a death cell and interrogated and tortured for one and a half years. In 1954 he was transferred to an ordinary cell which he shared with the former Polish consul in France, Juliusz Wilczur-Garztecki. Garztecki reported later two interesting details concerning the impressions he gained of Walter. Firstly, he said that Walter had been able to quote passages from Rudolf Steiner's central book on the path of esoteric training ("Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment" cf. above) verbatim; and secondly, he stated that Walter had had little esteem for clairvoyance as such. He regarded clairvoyance as a kind of bonus, the main aim of the esoteric path being the ordering of one's psyche. One important aspect of such an "ordering" was according to Walter the necessity of attainment of an ordered, internally consistent and logical world view ("Weltanschauung"). When this necessity was put in question he once replied "It's not my fault that spiritual beings demand this". He also insisted that before one wants to start on the anthroposophical path of inner development one should first become "a contemporary intellectual".

Walter was released from prison on 30 October 1954. A physician who examined him after his release from prison reported symptoms of cardiovascular failure with swelling of the legs, dull tones in the heart, symptoms of angina pectoris, paroxysmal stomach pains, purulent discharge from the ears, skin blemishes (...) with purulent discharge, inflammation of the left sciatic nerve, and significant weakness of the lower limbs, expressed as difficulty walking and severe pains. Walter himself looked at that period of his life in the following way:

In 1952 he was working on his master's thesis in the field of psychology of sensations of smell (he was hoping to get an appointment at the Polish Academy of Sciences and so combine his private life with scientific research) when a momentous turn of his destiny occurred. Walter inherited an unusually sturdy physical constitution from his parents – his father was a member of an athletes' club and yet could not win a hand-wrestling match against his wife – which proved to be an obstacle for Walter in carrying out certain esoteric exercises. In order to achieve the desired results in this sphere a weakening of Walter's physical constitution was necessary. In December 1951, around Christmas, there took place a "conference" in the spiritual worlds to which Walter got "invited". He complained that he could not achieve what he should and so it was agreed that because he could not and yet he should, special treatments had to be implemented. Walter understood what destiny procedures were being prepared for him and he agreed to them. In the night from 9th to 10 May 1952 he was arrested and taken to prison accused of spying. It should be added that Walter was not the only person arrested at that time. Security forces secretly occupied the villa in which Walter lived until 12 May and arrested every person who came there not suspecting the trap. One can assume that the aim of the communist authorities in taking that step was not only to detain Walter, but more generally to liquidate an independent centre of intellectual life in Poland.

In 1946, at the age of almost 40, Walter enrolled at the University of Warsaw yet was not very impressed by the quality of teaching and the academic abilities of his fellow students. Nonetheless, the villa in Komorow became a centre of flourishing intellectual life. Every Sunday dozens of people – older or younger – came to it to make use of Walter's library or to seek his advice in the matters of spiritual or simply intellectual life. One of these visitors was Nina Andrycz, one of the leading Polish actresses of the time and the wife of Jozef Cyrankiewicz, then Prime Minister of Poland. Andrycz wrote in her diary that she had become Walter's pupil (she was born in 1912, about 39 at the time). Interestingly he encouraged her to read Lao Tse, not Rudolf Steiner. Incidentally, Walter learned Chinese to be able to study Lao Tse in the original, for he did not trust the translations. Cyrankiewicz himself would also seek Walter's advice e.g. concerning his marriage. While Andrycz or Cyrankiewicz or both were at Walter's, dark cars of the state security attachment would be stationed outside the villa. Cyrankiewicz's visits also brought out an interesting aspect of Walter's personality to the fore. Walter never drank alcohol for he did not like it, yet during these meetings he was forced to drink vodka because a meeting with Cyrankiewicz and without alcohol was not at all conceivable. Hence, with his "weak head" and lacking experience he had to practice drinking. He treated this as a form of mortification: an exercise in overcoming his own reluctance.

During the German occupation, when all cultural life in Poland came to a standstill, Robert Walter managed to continue his scientific work and at the same time to deepen his esoteric life. He would carry out his meditation exercises even under most adverse circumstances. During the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 a bomb hit the building in which he lived. As it happened, Walter was immersed in meditation at that moment and almost miraculously survived unscathed: the sofa, on which he lay ended up on top of a pile of rubble. It was also around the time of the Uprising that Walter committed his, as he described it, biggest esoteric mistake. He recounted later that one day in a state of clairvoyant consciousness he met a person who had earlier died in a concentration camp, but for various reasons was not aware of that fact and regarded himself as still alive. That person complained to Robert Walter (whom he "saw") that his (dead person's) friends did not seem to notice him and did not react to his approaches. To that Walter responded by saying: "But you are dead!", which produced a state of shock in that person.

People who knew him well at that time report that having read the diary of Sister Faustyna (who died in 1938) Walter began to cooperate with her closely. He said that Sister Faustyna had taught him humility by "putting her foot on his head". The notes he made in the last three years of his life seem to indicate that during that period he was receiving direct instructions from Christ. He would often prostrate himself on the floor as if in atonement for the sins of his own or perhaps more likely of other people. He would recite Sister Faustyna's Chaplet to the Divine Mercy (in Polish: "Koronka do Miłosierdzia Bożego"), he also often took on himself the sufferings of other people. In one conversation Walter described this "procedure" in the typical for him entirely unpretentious fashion in the following way:

Robert Walter was hoping to enrol at a university in Germany and to study natural sciences, mathematics, astronomy, or possibly medicine, yet the precarious financial situation of his parents crossed these plans and he had to return to Poland. He wanted to help his parents financially and so he turned to experiments in and production of cosmetics. His perfume creations were so successful that they were traded with a fictitious cover story that the recipes were obtained from famous French firms. Finally, a cosmetics firm under the name "Orient" was founded in his name in Poznan, and later transferred to Warsaw. All that time Robert Walter was hoping that his business ventures would enable him to study abroad, the hopes that proved to be futile. It is important in this context to stress that despite his esoteric interests Robert Walter was unusually "down to earth": extremely precise, punctual and reliable, with a very keen practical and business sense, qualities which represented the opposite of the qualities of his parents. Despite deep character differences he maintained very good relationships with his parents, particularly with his mother, to whom he always had a warm, heartfelt devotion. In 1932 Walter finally abandoned his university ambitions even in Poland. Instead, he was dragged into joint activities with his mother and became co-owner and director (and above all the product designer) of the cosmetics factory "Deva" in Warsaw, which could be regarded as a continuation of "Orient". However, this venture was not limited to reproductions of Eastern cosmetics and sold also its own creations. Over the next two years, "Deva" managed by Walter's able hand began to thrive, thanks to which he became very wealthy, yet used his wealth not to lead a luxurious lifestyle, but to expand his library (he would even purchase 16th century manuscripts) which, though housed in his private flat, was entirely open to the public.

Walter achieved certain renown among his peers through his ability to repair watches and alarm clocks. He also exhibited a deep passion for books and learning. He described himself as "philobiblion" (lover of books) and always had a feeling that his knowledge on any given subject was not sufficient. Yet perhaps his most astonishing quality at the time was his deep and serious interest in the path of spiritual development. He studied avidly the central book of Rudolf Steiner on the subject ("Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment") as well as the relevant chapters of Steiner's "Occult Science" and described in a letter to his father with what intensity he worked on these indications. He claimed that he did not have any particular talent for clairvoyance and maintained that achieving initiation is in principle not more demanding than obtaining a PhD in any given subject. His school report at the end of the school year 1928 was generally very good and in mathematics and physics he came at the top of his class. His mathematics and physics teacher was Dr Walter Johannes Stein, one of the most prominent pupils of Rudolf Steiner. After his return to Poland young Robert Walter corresponded with Stein, who was 17 years his senior, for a number of years.

At school he initially did not excel and was rather a challenge to his teachers. Yet already as a child he was perceived by his surrounding as an unusual personality: unusually serious, capable of deep reflection, somebody who showed great promise. His peers tended to regard him as a great authority. His mother wrote in a letter to her then eleven-year-old son: "I miss your quiet, wise presence". Already at an early age he showed lively interest for all kinds of esoteric knowledge (often inspired by the books he obtained from his mother) and astrology. He founded his own astrological study group at the age of 16. He remained faithful to this interest until the end of his life. Robert Walter's lukewarm attitude to his studies changed when he was sent to the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart in 1927. He stayed there for only one year, but during that time caught fire for learning, especially mathematics, yet he also retained his love for music, composed a sonata for piano and violin and reflected on the Christian dimension of music.

Robert Maria Walter (born 7 November 1908 in Lvov, died 19 November 1981 in Komorow near Warsaw) was a Polish anthroposophist, astrologer, homeopath and initiate.