Love and Its Meaning in the World
Lectures by Rudolf Steiner
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After over 25 years of reading this book and thinking about its content, I am of the opinion that these are Steiner's most important lectures. A better knowledge and understanding of their content would go a long way toward removing a lot of the dogmatism and hierarchical thinking that has permeated the Anthroposophical movement and the world at large over the years. The title lecture alone is worth the price of the book - in it Steiner clarifies with poignant and exquisite beauty that the Being called Christ is Love, that anyone for whom Love is the primary reality of life is "Christian," regardless of whether he or she has ever heard of Jesus or Christ.
In relation to his development of Anthroposophy, love is the very heart and ground of all Steiner's teaching, the foundation of all he did, and all he hoped that others would do. These are the lectures that make that usually implicit assumption explicit - these are the lectures that reveal the foundation of his work. Steiner taught that, without love, nothing is possible; but that with love, we can do everything. Love is always love of the not-yet. To love is to create; it is to enter selflessly into the current of time that flows toward us from the future.
This collection brings together all of Steiner's main lectures and writings relating to love - from earthly love to the nature and function of spiritual love. Among the topics included are: The Mystery of Love; The Division into Sexes; The Mission of Reverence; the Buddha's Teaching of Compassion; and Love, Faith, Love, Hope; and the title lecture.
Anthroposophy in Everyday Life
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This is a collection of some of our favorite pamphlets of the past: "Practical Training in Thought," "Overcoming Nervousness," "Facing Karma," and "The Four Temperaments." There is an enormous amount of good advice and practical suggestions between these two covers - and many exercises which you will discover work very well. If you are someone who "does" their spiritual life, this book is for you.
Foundations of Human Experience
(earlier English translation titled Study of Man)
Foreword by Henry Barnes
Introduction by Nancy Whittaker (Parsons)
Translated by Robert F. Lathe and Nancy Whittaker (Parsons)
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This course on education contains some of the most remarkable and significant lectures ever given by Rudolf Steiner.
Because these lectures were given to teachers, however, they have suffered the misconception that they are useful only to teachers. Any teacher who wants to teach in a way that encompasses the whole child certainly needs a functional understanding of what Steiner presents here, but these lectures will also greatly benefit parents, psychologists, counselors, or anyone else involved with developing children.
Steiner gives his most concise and detailed account of human nature in these lectures, which are absolutely essential for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of Steiner's spiritual science. Those who are willing to work through this work will discover here a new, powerful, convincing, and profoundly phenomenological “anthropology” of human spiritual psychology.
In these lectures, Steiner laid out for the first time the principles that form the basis for renewing the art of teaching. The Foundations of Human Experience is the most important text for studying and understanding the human developmental and psychological basis for Waldorf education
Foundations is Rudolf Steiner's crowning articulation of the threefold human being, a portrait of spiritual/physical relationships and interworkings and is essential knowledge for anyone wishing to truly understand the heart of Anthroposphy. The self-knowledge that can result from an understanding of this book is also essential for anyone seeking to undertake spiritual development or to work in service of the development of others.
Although we can physically see children only after their birth, we need to be aware that birth is also a continuation. We do not want to look only at what the human being experiences after death, that is, at the spiritual continuation of the physical. We want to be aware that physical existence is a continuation of what higher beings have done without our assistance. Our form of educating can have the correct attitude only when we are aware that our work with young people is a continuation of what higher beings have done before birth.
Note: As we translated these fourteen lectures, we strove to render each thought clearly and completely in language accessible to anyone wanting to learn. To understand Lecture 2, you will need a working understanding of the terms and definitions of the nine-fold human being as presented in Chapter 1 of Theosophy. Beyond that, we believe that no other technical information is necessary to fully comprehend this book.
How to Know Higher Worlds
A Modern Path of Initiation
Translated by Christopher Bamford
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How to Know Higher Worlds is a favorite of ours. Christopher Bamford's translation is immediate, warm and inspiring. Here, for anyone who chooses to walk it, is a path of moral and spiritual development that speaks directly to the heart.
Stages of Higher Knowledge
Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition
Translated by Lisa Monges and Floyd McKnight
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In 1904, in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis, Rudolf Steiner published some of his earliest articles on self-development, which became his classic How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation. Steiner continued his articles as “The Stages of Higher Development.” He wrote of his intention in 1914: “A second part [of How to Know Higher Worlds] is to be added to this first part, bringing further explanations of the frame of mind that can lead to the experience of higher worlds.” Though Steiner never found time to publish those articles as a book, they are collected in this volume.
The Stages of Higher Knowledge records some of Steiner’s early esoteric instructions, revealing how he became a pioneer of modern inner development and spiritual activity. He carefully guides the reader from an ordinary, sensory-based “material mode of cognition” through the higher levels of knowing he calls Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. This small handbook will help anyone who wishes to take a serious approach to Anthroposophy as a path of knowledge, especially those who have already studied and worked with How to Know Higher Worlds.
What Is Anthroposophy?
Three Perspectives on Self-Knowledge
Translation by Christopher Bamford and Mado Spiegler
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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 ·missing 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 quite different view, however, emerges from a truly spiritual perspective. In the third lecture, 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.
An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmo
Translated by Catherine Creeger
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In this book, Rudolf Steiner shows us that an understanding of the depths of the human being is a true pathway to a knowledge of Spiritual Reality. Catherine Creeger's sensitive and clear translation gives Rudolf Steiner a voice highly accessible to the American reader. We really value this edition for the living quality of the language and the enthusiasm of its prose. Definitely recommended.
An Outline of Esoteric Science
New translation by Cathrine Creeger
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This is Rudolf Steiner's cosmology, a sweeping picture of cosmic, earthly and human evolution that resolves in guidance toward an esoteric path of moral and spiritual development. We know an interesting personal story about this book. William Dawson, an outstanding ornithologist during the earlier part of this century, although husband, father, and son-in-law to three active anthroposophers, was never particularly drawn to Anthroposophy. At the end of his life, as he lay in bed with his final illness, he read Occult Science. When he finished it, he closed the book, set it on the night stand, and, tapping his finger on the cover, said, "This man knows what he is talking about." He crossed the threshold of death three days later.
An Esoteric Cosmology
Evolution, Christ, and Modern Spirituality
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A congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society was held in Paris in May 1906. Rudolf Steiner attended with a number of students and presented a series of lectures to a small circle of friends, mostly society members. Edouard Schuré was present and made succinct notes of those talks, the result of which is An Esoteric Cosmology: Evolution, Christ, and Modern Spirituality. In is foreword, Schuré describes his initial impressions of Rudolf Steiner and the force of his vision: “These priceless lectures mark a significant phase of Rudolf Steiner’s thought—that of the spontaneous burst of his genius and its first crystallization.” Indeed, his notes record perhaps the first general outline and summary of what would become Anthroposophy, or spiritual science.
At the time of these lectures, most members viewed Theosophy as a kind of Europeanized Indian philosophy. Thus, one purpose of these lectures was to outline Steiner’s Christ-centered spiritual science in contrast to the more Eastern orientation of Theosophy. He carefully connected the essence of spiritual science to the role of the Christ in human evolution, as well as to the Rosicrucian and Christian mystery traditions, the primary carriers of the esoteric Christian stream. To accomplish this, Steiner presented the roots of Christianity in the ancient mysteries and in the evolution of the whole universe itself.
The miracle of these lectures, perhaps, is that Steiner was able to condense such a grand cosmology into these eighteen lectures, and that Edouard Schuré was able to capture their essence in the relatively brief notes that constitute this book. A few years later, the substance of these lectures were expanded and presented in Rudolf Steiner’s Outline of Esoteric Science. These lecture notes will prove invaluable for all those who wish to better understand that book, as well as Rudolf Steiner’s Christian cosmology and perspective on esoteric Christianity and the Christian mysteries.
Youth and the Etheric Heart
Rudolf Steiner Speaks to the Younger Generation
Translated by Catherine E Creeger
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All knowledge, even purely scholarly knowledge, must merge into pure artistry.
—Rudolf Steiner, February 14, 1923
Youth and the Etheric Heart describes the essence of this lecture course. Although the younger generation of Rudolf Steiner's time was not yet aware of it, the question “How can we find the spirit?” was the driving force of the times, leading to the “youth movement.” In fact, as Steiner emphasized, the spiritually active forces that produced the youth movement were manifesting as such for the first time. University students were affected as well by the struggles of the early twentieth century, but it was Steiner who brought clarity to the myriad of forms that resulted from the difficulties young people were experiencing. These were the connections of destiny that lay just beneath the surface of ordinary consciousness; those forces were struggling to take form.
At the very first event in the newly built Goetheanum during the autumn of 1920, Steiner addressed the students assembled in Dornach, after which he continued his theme in Stuttgart during spring 1921. The first five lectures began in Dornach during the first course on higher education in 1920 and ended in Stuttgart the following year at the public conference, “Cultural Prospects of the Anthroposophical Movement.” The October lectures of the youth course took place the following year, picking up the thread from the previous talks.
At Christmas 1922, Steiner announced the lecture cycle, “The Moment of Emergence of Natural Science in World History and Its Subsequent Development.” The invitation was issued by the association of scientific researchers at the Goetheanum and by the branch of the Anthroposophical Society. The lectures were open to “every member of the Anthroposophical Society and individuals with an unbiased interest in our movement,” and a number of young adults were in attendance. Steiner addressed them specifically on January 6, 1923, after the loss of the first Goetheanum. This address was entitled “The Cognitive Task of Academic Youth.”
The high point of 1923 was Steiner’s establishment of the General Anthroposophical Society at the so-called Christmas Conference. Within the Independent School of Spiritual Science, Steiner created a Section for the “Spiritual Striving of Youth.” In a series of essays, he drafted the idea of this workplace for young adults and the goals it would attempt to realize.
Chapters in the Course of My Life: 1861-190
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Rudolf Steiner seldom spoke of himeself in a personal way, but in his Autobiography we are offered a rare glimpse into some of the most intimate aspects of his inner life, his personal relationships, and significant events that helped to shape the philosopher, seer, and teacher he became.
This edition restores the original format of seventy chapters, just as they were written for the Goetheanum weekly newsletter. This autobiography is not merely a narrative of Rudolf Steiner's successes and failures, but the story of a soul possessed of a precise, probing scientific mind and a natural clairvoyant ability to see into the spiritual world. Although naturally clairvoyant, Steiner always recognized the integrity and importance of modern scientific methods, and thus he developed a modern discipline he called Anthroposophy.
During the century that followed the events recorded in this autobiography, Rudolf Steiner's insights have touched and enriched numerous areas of life in ways that continue to transform people’s lives in the twenty-first century.
Because I entered this world with defined soul predispositions, and because the course of my life, as expressed in my biography, is determined by those predispositions, as a spiritual human being I must have existed before my birth. As a being of spirit, I must be the repetition of someone through whose biography mine can be explained. In each life the human spirit appears as a repetition of itself with the fruits of experiences during previous lives.
— Rudolf Steiner
Dr. Rudolf Steiner and the Science of Spiritual Realities
A one-hour video documentary
Karl M. Levin
DVD - 60 minutes
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Dr. Rudolf Steiner is a fascinating journey into the realms just beyond our five senses, where thoughts are things and creation begins. Rudolf Steiner not only learned how to experience these areas directly, he also developed specific techniques that can enable the individual to "see" into spiritual reality.
In addition to learning about Rudolf Steiner, we meet some of the men and women who are utilizing the impulses brought by Dr. Steiner to expand and enhance their specific vocations in very practical ways, e.g., Education Agriculture, Medicine, Astronomy, Mathematics, Architecture, the Arts, and working with Developmentally Disabled children and adults.
Ancient Saturn to Atlantis
A Teenagers' Travel Guide to the Evolution of the World and Man in the Light of Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Science - a Creative Approach
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Ancient Saturn to Atlantis serves up an invigorating rendition of Steiner's Outline of Esoteric Science written with the adolescent in mind. Teens will find this to be rollicking ride through the evolution of our world and of humanity (adults will also love it, but for heaven's sake, don't let the teens know!). In the process, they'll also find themselves inspired by the grand vision, the wonder and the purpose of it all. An unexpected treasure!
Founding a Science of the Spirit
(formerly At the Gates of Spiritual Science)
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Founding a Science of the Spirit offers a fine introduction to the whole of Steiner's teaching, as well as including valuable material which is not to be found elsewhere. Steiner speaks to the fundamental nature of the human being in relation to the cosmos, the evolution of the Earth, the journey of the soul after death, reincarnation and karma, good and evil, the modern path of meditative training and its relationship to the spiritual path of yoga, as well as giving answers to individual questions. This is actually one of my favorite of Steiner's lecture series, being both microcosmic and crystal clear. Highly recommended.
Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
A Philosophy of Freedom
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This is Rudolf Steiner's fundamental philosophical work, a phenomenological presentation that begins with ordinary thinking, then forges a pathway to the practice and experience of living thinking.
GA 4 - Die Philosophie der Freiheit
Art as Spiritual Activity
Rudolf Steiner's Contribution to the Visual Arts
Edited and Introduced by Michael Howard
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It's hard to know where to focus my enthusiasm for this volume: whether to rest it upon Michael Howard's extensive introduction (over 100 pages) to the world of Rudolf Steiner's expression of the visual arts or upon the ten seminal lectures by Steiner himself, touching as they do upon everything from the nature of aesthetics to the specifics of painting, sculpture, architecture and more. Perhaps the best I can say is that if you've ever wondered or wanted to know more about the artistic impulse behind Anthroposophic art, this is the ideal place to begin your journey. It's hard for me to imagine anyone regretting it.
The Foundation Stone and The Life, Nature, and Cultivation of Anthroposophy
Translated by J. Collis,
and Pauline Wehrle
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This volume brings together two important booklets. The former contains Rudolf Steiner's commentary on the Foundation Stone Meditation, the meditation that expresses the heart of Anthroposophy. Several alternative translations of the meditation are offered as well. The second part contains Steiner's letters to members of the Anthroposophical Society in which he offered valuable guidelines and thoughts concerning the new character of the Society, its conduct, and relation to the world.
An Introduction to His Spiritual Worldview, Anthroposophy
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In many ways, Rudolf Steiner is the forgotten genius of recent times. A powerful thinker, who developed an intricate spiritual philosophy based on his ability to research and perceive spiritual dimensions, Steiner is perhaps best known today for his legacy to education, medicine and agriculture. But behind these practical manifestations of his ideas lies a profound teaching, which he termed a science of spirit, or anthroposophy. In these wonderfully succinct summaries of Steiner’s thought, Roy Wilkinson introduces us to aspects of this spiritual philosophy.
The twelve chapters discuss:
- Rudolf Steiner, herald of a new age reincarnation and karma
- The spiritual nature of the human being
- The development of human consciousness
- World and human evolution
- Relationships between the living and the dead
- Forces of evil
- A modern path of initiation
- Life between death and rebirth
- The spiritual hierarchies
- Philosophical approach to the spirit
- The Christ’s mission
Rudolf Steiner - Herald of a New Epoch
Stewart C. Easton
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Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) became a respected and well-published scientific, literary, and philosophical scholar, particularly known for his work on Goethe’s scientific writings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he began to develop his earlier philosophical principles into an approach to methodical research of psychological and spiritual phenomena. His multifaceted genius has led to innovative and holistic approaches in medicine, philosophy, religion, education (Waldorf schools), special education (the Camphill movement), economics, agriculture (biodynamics), science, architecture, and the arts (drama, speech and eurythmy). In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which has branches throughout the world.
This full-scale biography of Rudolf Steiner by Stewart Easton is the first one written in English. It shows how Steiner's thought and work developed year by year and provides background to his various books, lectures, artistic achievements, and activities. At the same time, the reader is enabled to glimpse the man himself, the unique personality who founded anthroposophy and whose influence is still increasing seventy-five years after his death.
STEWARD EASTON (1907–1989), historian and writer, was a General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America.