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Published in 1904 (CW 10)
While we cannot all instantly become 'seers, ' the cognitive insights of a person who has such vision can nevertheless provide healthy food for all. All of us can apply these insights to our lives; and if we do so, we shall soon realize not only the possibilities of life in every area but also what life lacks when we exclude these insights. --Rudolf SteinerThis is the bestselling classic account of the modern Western esoteric path of initiation made public by Steiner in 1904. He begins with the premise that the capacities by which we can gain insights into the higher worlds lie dormant within each one of us. Steiner carefully and precisely leads the reader from the cultivation of the fundamental soul attitudes of reverence and inner tranquility to the development of inner life through the stages of preparation, illumination, and initiation.
Steiner provides practical exercises of inner and outer observation and moral development. By patiently and persistently following his guidelines, new organs of soul and spirit begin to form, which reveal the contours of the higher worlds thus far concealed from us.
Steiner in this important work becomes a teacher, a counselor, and a friend whose advice is practical, clear, and effective. The challenges we face in life require increasingly deeper levels of understanding, and Steiner's text helps readers to cultivate the capacities for such insights and places them at the service of humanity.
This is Steiner's most essential guide to the modern path of initiation he advocated throughout his life. It has been translated into many languages and has inspired hundreds of thousands of readers around the world. How to Know Higher Worlds has been admired by some of the most brilliant minds of our time.
This volume is a translation from German of the written work Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? (GA 10).
Written in 1904 (CW 9)
Theosophy is a key work for gaining a solid footing in spiritual reality as described by Rudolf Steiner. It is organized into four parts. First, Steiner builds a comprehensive understanding of human nature: physical bodily nature; soul qualities; spirit being, or I-being; and the higher spiritual aspects. This leads us to Steiner's description of the human being as sevenfold:
- Material, physical bodyIn the next section, Steiner offers an extraordinary overview of the laws of reincarnation and the principles of karma, as we pass from one life to the next. This prepares us for the third section, in which he shows the various ways in which we live--during life on earth and after death and in the three worlds of body, soul, and spirit.
Finally, we are given a succinct description of the path of knowledge, along which each person can begin to understand the marvelous and harmonious complexity of the psycho-spiritual worlds in their fullness.
This volume is a translation of Theosophie, Einführung in übersinnliche Welterkenntnis und Menschenbestimmung (GA 9).
8 lectures and 4 discussions, Koberwitz, June 7-20, 1924 (CW 327)
With this remarkable series of lectures presented in Koberwitz, Silesia, June 7 to 16, 1924, Rudolf Steiner founded biodynamic agriculture. They contain profound insights into farming, the plant and animal world, the nature of organic chemistry, and the influences of heavenly bodies. This translation from the original German by Catherine E. Creeger and Malcolm Gardner is a fundamental text for many intermediate and advanced students of biodynamic agriculture--one to which the biodynamic practitioner will refer again and again over the years.
In addition to the eight lectures, this edition includes:
Agriculture is a translation from German of the book Geisteswissenschaftliche Grundlagen zum Gedeihen der Landwirtschaft. Landwirtschaftlicher Kursus (GA 327).
Four of Rudolf Steiner's best-loved lectures are collected in this book. They are four of the most accessible presentations of the anthroposophic approach to life available in English.
Practical Training in Thought (Karlsruhe, Jan. 18, 1909) concerns the fundamental human activity of thinking. Everything we do, we do through thinking. The first task, then, is to realize the reality of thinking. To help us do this, Steiner provides exercises that can allow us to experience the cognitive--even clairvoyant--power of thinking.
Overcoming Nervousness (Munich, Jan. 11, 1912) shows us how exercises in thinking also give us the calm, centered sense we need to lead a purposeful, healthy life.
Facing Karma (Vienna, Feb. 8, 1912) takes us to the heart of life, where we experience desire and aversion, suffering and happiness. The law of karma that determines life's experiences and encounters also helps us develop the self-knowledge required for self-transformation.
The Four Temperaments (Berlin, Mar. 4, 1909) show us how the union of hereditary factors and our own inner spiritual nature shape our psychology. The guide here is the ancient classifications of the four temperaments: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic. Renewed understanding of these qualities allows us to develop a truly modern spiritual psychology, which forms the basis of all real inner development.
With its many practical exercises, mantras, and meditations, this book is a fundamental introduction and guide for anyone beginning or in need of encouragement on one's path of inner development.
10 lectures in Düsseldorf, April 12-18, 1909;
participants' notes from Q&A sessions (CW 110)
Ever since nature and consciousness were separated during the late Middle Ages--giving rise to scientific thinking that considers only the physical world and views the mind as merely an epiphenomenon of neural chemistry--the spiritual beings who are the universe have felt abandoned and unable to complete their work, which depends on human collaboration for its suc-cess. Human beings have likewise felt aban-doned and alienated.
In these remarkable lectures, Rudolf Steiner reestablishes the human being as a participant in an evolving, dynamic universe of living spiritual beings: a living universe, whole and divine. He does so in concrete images, capable of being grasped by human consciousness as if from within.
How is this possible? Implicit in Rudolf Steiner's view is the fact that, essentially, the universe consists of consciousness. Everything else is illusion. Hence, to understand the evolution of the cosmos and humanity in any terms other than consciousness is also an illusion. Whenever we are dealing with grand cosmic facts, we are dealing with states of consciousness.
But states of consciousness never exist apart from the beings who embody them. Therefore, the only true realities are beings in various states of consciousness. In this sense, Steiner's spiritual science is a science of states of consciousness and the beings who embody them. Indeed, any science--physics, chemistry, botany, psychology--is a science of beings. And the sensory perception, or physical trace, is simply the outer vestment of the activity of beings in various states of consciousness. To describe these beings, Steiner uses the names made familiar by the wisdom traditions of the West. He speaks of the evolutionary states of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and so on; the nine choirs of angels; elemental beings and nature spirits; and the elements of fire, earth, air, and water.
The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World: Zodiac, Planets & Cosmos is a translation from German of Geistige Hiearchien und ihre Wiederspiegelung in der physischen Welt. Tierkreis, Planeten, Kosmos (GA 110). The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World: Reality and Illusion (1996) contained a previous edition of this lecture course.
6 lectures, Berlin, March 24-June 7, 1905;
2 lectures, Nov. 7, 1905 & Oct. 22, 1908;
Questions & Answers, 1904-1922 (CW 324a)
The point, line, plane and solid objects represent the first three dimensions, but a kind of reversal of space is involved in the ascent to a fourth dimension. Steiner leads us to the brink of this new perspective--as nearly as it can be done with words, diagrams, analogies, and examples of many kinds. In doing so, he continues his lifelong project of demonstrating that our objective, everyday thinking is the lowest rung of a ladder that reaches up to literally infinite heights.
The talks in this series and the selections from the question-and-answer sessions on many mathematical topics over the years are translated into English for the first time in The Fourth Dimension. They bring us to tantalizing new horizons of awareness where Steiner hoped to lead his listeners:
Topics include:
∞ The relationship between geometric studies and the development of direct spiritual perception
∞ How to construct a fourth-dimensional hypercube
∞ The six dimensions of the self-aware human being
∞ Problems with the theory of relativity
∞ The Trinity and angelic hierarchies and their relationship to physical space
∞ The dimensional aspect of the spiritual being encountered by Moses on Mt. Sinai
Drawings in the text: The sketches of figures that Rudolf Steiner drew on the board during the lectures are available only in the form in which they were preserved by the note takers. Reconstructions of the drawings for this volume were done by Renatus Ziegler.
This volume is a translation from German of Die vierte Dimension Mathematik und Wirklichkeit (GA 324a).
The rebirth of the feminine surrounds us in many forms--from the global movement for women's rights to a renewed interest in feminine spirituality, the Goddess, and the Divine Mother. What is the spiritual meaning of this rebirth? What is the feminine divine? Who is she?
The feminine divine has had many names in many cultures: Ishtar in Babylon, Inanna in Sumeria, Athena, Hera, Demeter, and Persephone in Greece, Isis in Egypt, Durga, Kali, and Lakshmi in India. She is the Shekinah of the Cabalists, and the Sophia of the Gnostics. To Steiner, she is Anthroposophia (or Divine Wisdom), who descended from the spiritual world and passed through humanity to become now the goal and archetype of human wisdom in the cosmos.
This book contains most of Steiner's statements on Sophia. We see him midwifing the birth of the Sophia, the new Isis, and divine feminine wisdom, in human hearts on earth. Each chapter explores the mystery of the various relationships of Sophia: Sophia and Isis, Sophia and the Holy Spirit, Sophia and Mary, the mother of Jesus (and Mary Magdalene), Sophia and the Gnostic Achamod, and Sophia and the New Isis.
Above all, in a remarkable way, Steiner makes clear the relationship of Christ and Sophia.
Written in 1894 (CW 4)
The realms of life are many. For each, specific sciences develop. But life itself is a unity, and the more the sciences busily immerse themselves in separate realms, the farther they move away from seeing the living wholeness of the world. There must be a kind of knowing that seeks, in the separate sciences, the elements that lead human beings back to full life again. A scientific specialist wants to become aware of the world and how it works through his or her insights. In this book, the goal is philosophical: science itself is to become organically alive. The separate sciences are preludes to the science attempted here. -- Rudolf Steiner (preface to the 1st edition)Of all of his works, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path (Die Philosophie der Freiheit) is the one that Steiner himself believed would have the longest life and the greatest spiritual and cultural consequences. It was written as a phenomenological account of the results of observing the human soul according to the methods of natural science.
This seminal work asserts that free spiritual activity--understood as the human ability to think and act independently of physical nature--is the suitable path for human beings today to gain true knowledge of themselves and of the universe. This is not merely a philosophical volume, but rather a warm, heart-oriented guide to the practice and experience of living thinking.
Readers will not find abstract philosophy here, but a step-by-step account of how a person may come to experience living, intuitive thinking--the conscious experience of a purely spiritual content.
During the past hundred years since it was written, many have tried to discover this new thinking that could help us understand the various spiritual, ecological, social, political, and philosophical issues facing us. But only Rudolf Steiner laid out a path that leads from ordinary thinking to the level of pure spiritual activity--intuitive thinking--in which we become co-creators and co-redeemers of the world.
When, with the help of Steiner's book, we recognize that thinking is an essentially spiritual activity, we discover that it can school us. In that sense--Steiner's sense--thinking is a spiritual path. -- Gertrude Reif HughesThis volume is arguably the most essential of Steiner's works. The thoughts in this book establish the foundation for all of Anthroposophy.
Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path is a translation from German of Die Philosophie der Freiheit (GA 4).
2024 Reprint of the 1947 Edition. A Revised and Enlarged Edition of The Way of Initiation and Initiation and Its Results. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Rudolf Steiner developed exercises aimed at cultivating new cognitive faculties he believed would be appropriate to contemporary individual and cultural development. According to Steiner's view of history, in earlier periods people were capable of direct spiritual perceptions, or clairvoyance, but not yet of rational thought; more recently, rationality has been developed at the cost of spiritual perception, leading to the alienation characteristic of modernity. Steiner proposed that humanity now has the task of synthesizing the rational and contemplative/spiritual components of cognition, whereby spiritual perception would be awakened through intensifying thinking. He considered this relevant not only to personal development, but as a foundation for advanced scientific research.
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment constitutes a fundamental guide to the anthroposophical path of cognition or knowledge. In human consciousness, faculties are sleeping that, if awakened, lead to life-giving wisdom. With great clarity and warmth Rudolf Steiner details the exercises and moral qualities to be cultivated on the path to a conscious experience of supersensible realities.
This book, perhaps the most controversial of Steiner's extensive literary legacy, suggests the possibility of a person in the 20th century developing sufficient skills of concentration, empathy, etc. to be able to obtain first-hand knowledge of spiritual realities consciously.
7 lectures, Torquay, UK, August 12-20, 1924 (CW 311)
These seven intimate, aphoristic talks were presented to a small group on Steiner's final visit to England. Because they were given to pioneers dedicated to opening a new Waldorf school, these talks are often considered one of the best introductions to Waldorf education.
Steiner shows the necessity for teachers to work on themselves first, in order to transform their own inherent gifts. He explains the need to use humor to keep their teaching lively and imaginative. Above all, he stresses the tremendous importance of doing everything in the knowledge that children are citizens of both the spiritual and the earthly worlds. And, throughout these lectures, he continually returns to the practical value of Waldorf education.
These talks are filled with practical illustrations and revolve around certain themes--the need for observation in teachers; the dangers of stressing the intellect too early; children's need for teaching that is concrete and pictorial; the education of children's souls through wonder and reverence; the importance of first presenting the whole, then the parts, to the children's imagination.
Here is one of the best introductions to Waldorf education, straight from the man who started it all.
This volume is a translation of Die Kunst des Erziehens aus dem Erfassen der Menschenwesenheit, volume 311 of the Complete Centenary Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner, published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland.
There was a time when a continent called Atlantis still lay between Europe and America. This portion of the world's surface was at one time land; this land now forms the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Plato alluded to the last remaining remnant of that lost continent when he sopke of the Island of Poseidon. Countless publications are dedicated to proving that Atlantis existed and attempt to discover the location of the Lost Continent. Here, accepting the existence of Atlantis, the author pontificates on the spiritual condition of soul attempts to indicate the inner nature of the conditions under which they lived. An interesting discourse on the evolution of the Atlantean and Leumurian race as revealed by the Akashic records.
Atlantis was first mentioned in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias, written in 360 BC. Obtained from the Akashic Records and under the influence of the Theosofical Publishing Society, Steiner presents in this work the Akashic information available about Atlantis and Lemuria.
Meditation instructions, meditations, exercises, verses for living a spiritual year, prayers for the dead, and other practices for both beginning and experienced practitioners--Start Now! has become the classic, indispensable text and reference for all those who are serious about the practice of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science.
Start Now! is an inspiring guide to the practical aspects of Anthroposophy. It offers the most extensive collection available of Steiner's spiritual instructions and practices, including meditation instructions; mantric verses; daily, weekly, and monthly practices for developing one's soul qualities; karmic exercises and meditations for working with the dead, with the angelic hierarchies, and with our guardian angels.
Start Now! might be the most unique and comprehensive spiritual guidebook available, and it will become a lifelong friend and help along the way. No one who is serious about spiritual practice--beginners or seasoned students--should be without this book!
8 lectures, 2 Q&A sessions, and 2 closing addresses, in various cities, December 3, 1906 - March 16, 1923 (CW 283)
A tone is at the foundation of everything in the physical world.This is one of many astonishing statements made by Rudolf Steiner in this collection of seven lectures on the inner realities of music. These lectures are an unusual treasure, since they are the only two groups of lectures that Steiner gave primarily on music, other than the lecture cycle for the tone eurythmy course, Eurythmy as Visible Singing.
In the first group of three lectures, given in 1906, Steiner explains why music affects the human soul so powerfully. Music has always held a special position among the arts because it is the only art form whose archetype, or source, lies not in the physical world, as with architecture, sculpture, and painting, but purely in the spiritual world-the soul's true home. Music thus directly expresses through tones the innermost essence of the cosmos, and our sense of wellbeing when we hear music comes from a recognition of our soul's experience in the spiritual world.
In the remaining lectures, given in 1922 and 1923, Steiner discusses our experience of musical intervals and shows how it has undergone profound changes during the course of evolution. The religious effects of music in ancient times and the union of music with speech are considered, as well as the origin of musical instruments out of imaginations that accompanied singing. New insights are offered on the nature of the major and minor modes and on future directions of musical development.
Major and minor keys, this strange bond between music and human subjectivity, the actual inner life of feeling--insofar as this life of feeling is bound to the earthly corporeality--came into being only in the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and are related to the experience of the third. The difference between major and minor keys appears; the subjective soul element relates itself to the musical element. -- Rudolf Steiner (lect. 5)This volume is a translation of 7 lectures (of 8) in Das Wesen des Musikalischen und das Tonerlebnis im Menschen, published by Rudolf Steiner-Nachlaftverwaltung, Dornach, 1969 (GA 283).
12 lectures, Hamburg, May 5-31, 1908 (CW 103)
During Pentecost 1908--seven years after he had given the world his book Christianity As Mystical Fact and the first intimation of the consequences of his Christ experience--Rudolf Steiner began his great work of renewing humanity's understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha and its meaning for human and earthly evolution. Accordingly, he turned to the deepest, most spiritual of the Gospels--that of the initiate St. John.
In this lecture course, readers will find that the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Divine Word, or Logos, reveals the mission of the Earth: Love. We learn of the mysteries behind Lazarus' resurrection, the I AM sayings, and the seven degrees of initiation. We come to understand that the Gospel of St. John is a continuing spiritual presence--to be recalled, meditated, and permeated with one's own life. In doing so, we realized that our purpose--and that of all humankind--is to become the Virgin Sophia, a receptical for the Holy Spirit.
All of Steiner's work, as Marie Steiner writes in her introduction, was to pave the way to Christ. Indeed, at the conclusion of these lectures, Rudolf Steiner said: It will come to be understood that Christianity is only beginning its influence and will fulfill its real mission only when it is understood in its true, spiritual form.... The more these lectures are understood in this sense, the better they will be understood as they were intended. This volume is essential if one is to truly understand Rudolf Steiner's understanding of esoteric Christianity and its place in the world today and in the future.
This volume is a translation of Das Johannes-Evangelium (GA 103).
16 lectures, various cities, Oct. 26, 1912 - May 13, 1913 (CW 140)
In these lectures Steiner deals with the experiences of the human soul during and after death. On the basis of precise clairvoyant observations, he describes the events experienced during the millennium of the soul's journey within the vast realms of soul and spirit between death and rebirth.
Steiner describes the states of consciousness experienced by our deceased loved ones and how we--by considering their new consciousness--can communicate with them and even help them. Reading these descriptions, it becomes clear that excarnated souls need the spiritual support of those presently incarnated, and that those still on earth, in turn, derive enlightenment and support from their former earthly companions.
Life between Death and Rebirth is a translation of 16 lectures from Okkulte Untersuchungen über das Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt. Die lebendige Wechselwirkung zwischen Leben und Tod (CW 140)
3 selected lectures by Rudolf Steiner
This is one of those books that can change your life. Radical, thought-provoking, and indeed mind-boggling, it leads to a completely new way of looking at what it means to be human--a spiritual being in a universe that itself is not just physical, but psychic and spiritual as well.
These three previously untranslated lectures are a masterly introduction to what Rudolf Steiner means by Anthroposophy. They explain why Steiner describes this path--which means literally the wisdom of the human being--as one that unites what is spiritual in the human being with what is spiritual in the universe.
Steiner begins by describing what happens when we die. He shows the relationship between our physical life on Earth and the etheric, astral, and spiritual life of the cosmos. He also explains how physical lives are completely interwoven with cosmic existence, and how the miss-ing links in evolution are spiritual in nature.
Steiner then demonstrates what he calls the dilettantism and soullessness of mainstream psychology. He points out that, since the second half of the nineteenth century, the idea of the soul has been lost and that, consequently, understanding of our inner lives is without a sure foundation. A very different view emerges, however, from a truly spiritual perspective.
In the third lec-ture, Steiner takes as his guide our three states of being--waking, dreaming, and sleeping. He describes in detail what happens in these three states and how each is bound up with our lives as physical, psychic, and spiritual beings.
With the profound insights in this book, the world becomes a much larger, richer, and more exciting place to live.
It is necessary for human beings to remember not only what they already understand, but to come to understand what they already know--that is, what they have acquired by memory in the way the child acquires language.... In a certain sense, understanding things through concepts should proceed from the stored-up treasures of the memory. The more children know in memory before they begin to understand through intellectual concepts the better. (p. 31)
As early as 1884, while tutoring a boy with special needs, Steiner began a lifelong interest in applying spiritual knowledge to the practical aspects of life. Steiner originally published the essay at the core of this book in 1907. It represents his earliest ideas on education, in which he lays out the soul spiritual processes of human development, describing the need to understand how the being of a child develops through successive births, beginning with the physical body's entry into earthly life, and culminating in the emergence of the I-being with adulthood.
Also included are several early lectures on education, ranging from 1906 to 1911, well before the birth of the Waldorf movement in 1919.
Waldorf education--an established and growing independent school movement--continues to be shaped and inspired by Rudolf Steiner's numerous writings and lectures on education and child development.
In Rhythms of Learning, key lectures on children and education have been thoughtfully chosen from the vast amount of material by Steiner and presented in a context that makes them reader-friendly and accessible. In his many discussions and lectures, Steiner shared his vision of education that considers the spirit, soul, and physiology in children as they grow.
Roberto Trostli, a seasoned Waldorf teacher, has selected the works that best illustrate the fundamentals of this unique approach. In each chapter, Trostli explains Steiner's concepts and describes how they work in the contemporary Waldorf classroom. We learn how the teacher-child relationship and the Waldorf school curriculum changes as the students progress from kindergarten through high school.
Rhythms of Learning is an excellent resource for parents who want to understand how their child is learning. Parents will also be more prepared to discuss their child's education with teachers, and teachers will find it to be a valuable reference source and communication tool.