Showing that the findings of anthroposophical spiritual science may be seen as a vital contribution to academic sciences, the author states that anthroposophy aims to enhance human powers of perception. This volume includes two series of lectures given by him on this topic at the request of anthroposophists connected with the university in Zurich.
‘How can our souls unite with the etheric Christ, experienced in the etheric world since the end of the last century? What steps should we take, in the second century of the age of Michael, to unite with Him?’ At the centre of humanity’s evolution stands the Mystery of Golgotha, through which the Christ impulse entered the earth. Anthroposophy, said Rudolf Steiner, was given at the beginning of the last century to prepare for the second major Christ event – the etheric Second Coming – beginning in 1933. This Event is the portal that leads to the mighty and transformative happenings taking place in the etheric world right now, enabling us to meet the etheric Christ, Michael and Anthroposophia. At the heart of this book is an existential question. Early in his anthroposophical work, Ben-Aharon came to realize that without the light of spiritual science, the meeting with the etheric Christ remained simply a personal experience. Likewise, without the new life forces streaming from the etheric Christ, anthroposophy was merely a body of knowledge, frozen in time. Both needed each other. But how was that mutually-enlivening bridge to be built? Speaking candidly of his personal spiritual path and inner struggles of consciousness, Ben-Aharon tackles this fundamental dilemma as a prelude to the forthcoming, second edition of his book The New Experience of the Supersensible. Contents include: The Ur-Phenomena of the Modern Christ Experience, Paul’s Christ Experience and the Birth of Christian Platonism; The Michaelic Yoga; The Platonic-Aristotelian Essence Exchange at the End of the Twentieth Century; The Meeting with the Etheric Christ; The Abyss and the Event of the Threshold; The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming; The Meeting with Michael; The Meeting with Anthroposophia.
This book is the first introduction into anthroposophy and anthroposophical medicine on the basis of epistemology, physics, chemistry, molecular biology, neurobiology, psychology, philosophy of mind, history of science, and evidence based medicine. Justification of a non-reductionist, academic anthropology and medical practice accounting for body, life, soul, and spirit.
Rudolf Steiner differentiated clearly between the spiritual concept of Imagination and our everyday understanding of the word. As living, pictorial thinking, Imagination is a primary aspect of the contemporary path of inner schooling – the first of three levels of initiate knowledge and cognition. Imagination leads us into a world of flowing, living pictures: a realm of soul and spirit in which everything is in continual movement.This anthology offers a survey of the diverse aspects of Imagination and imaginative cognition. As the thematically re-ordered texts reveal, Rudolf Steiner's spiritual philosophy – anthroposophy – is itself often pictorial and imaginative in nature. Many of its fundamental concepts, such as the evolution of the world and the human being, were formulated by Steiner in vivid, living pictures. However, whilst imaginative perception leads us to the threshold of the spiritual world, we can also fall prey there to illusions, visions and hallucinations.This volume, expertly assembled by Edward de Boer, draws on the entirety of Rudolf Steiner's collected works – from his earliest writings to passages from his many lectures. It is conceived as a stimulus to readers to practise, deepen and extend their own imaginative consciousness. Steiner's commentary on 'exemplary Imaginations', in particular, encourages further study, contemplation and schooling of our own pictorial thinking.Chapters include 'Imagination as Supersensible Cognition'; 'The Rosicrucian Path of Schooling'; 'Exercises to Develop Imagination'; 'Understanding Imagination Through Inspiration and Intuition'; 'Illusions, Hallucinations and Visions'; 'Imaginative Perception as the Threshold to the Etheric World'; 'Goethe's Worldview' and 'Exemplary Imaginations' (including commentary on 'The Fairy-tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily', The Mystery Plays; The Great Initiates; the 'Apocalyptic Seals'; The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and the 'Michael Imagination').
"Once one has passed through powerlessness and refinds oneself, one also finds Christ. Before we can gain access to the Christ Impulse we must plumb the depths of our own feelings of insignificance, and this can only happen when we view our strengths and capacities without any pride."How does one find the Christ today? Rudolf Steiner emphasizes the importance of striving for self-knowledge, the significance of experiencing powerlessness, and the eventual resurrection from powerlessness. In this important lecture he also speaks about the ancient Academy of Gondishapur, the significance of the year 666, the mission of Islam, as well as the crucial consequences of the Ecumenical Council of 869.
In a radical approach to understanding current affairs and history, Rudolf Steiner presents a method of penetrating to the hidden causes and realities that lie behind outer appearances. Contemporary life cannot fully be understood by an analysis that is restricted to external events, he says. Deeper levels of meaning are revealed when one begins to view such events as symptoms. The causes of these symptoms – the reality behind them – are to be discovered on other levels of existence. Steiner demonstrates such a ‘symptomatological’ approach in these lectures, surveying some of the great developments in consciousness that have helped form the world over the last centuries. He examines the role of true socialism, the rise of nationalism, and characterises contrasting approaches to religion by drawing a distinction between ‘the People of the Christ’ in Russia, ‘the People of the Church’ in Central Europe, and ‘the People of the Lodges’ in the West. Amongst the wealth of material covered here, Rudolf Steiner discusses ‘the mystery of evil’ and ‘the mystery of death’, the birth of the consciousness soul, the significance of the scientific mode of thought, the metaphysical element in the study of history, as well as specific events such as the Russian Revolution and the suppression of the Knights Templar. He also reviews the circumstances surrounding the publication of new editions of his books The Philosophy of Freedom and Goethe’s World View. Anyone seeking a more profound understanding of our times will find a firm basis for a meaningful exploration in this course of lectures. 9 lectures, Dornach, Oct.–Nov. 1918, GA 185
5 public lectures and an evening discussion, various cities, June 17, 1920 - May 11, 1922 (CW 75) This previously untranslated volume in The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner showcases Rudolf Steiner presenting the key concepts and methods of spiritual science to more or less skeptical academic audiences in the early 1920s. Step by step, he presented to his listeners the fundamentals of the anthroposophic path of knowledge. Steiner was less concerned with presenting results from his spiritual-scientific research than with leading his academic audience to an objective understanding of spiritual science in a propaedeutic, conceptually transparent way. The central questions of his approach were: What are the tools and instruments required to orient oneself in the world of the soul and the spirit? How can we know that the spiritual world is an objective world and not merely a psychic projection? What authorizes the spiritual researcher to acknowledge what he has experienced "on the other side" as a reality that is independent of him? Rudolf Steiner addresses these and other questions in such a structured and readily comprehensible way that the volume as a whole is well suited, both as an introductory text and as a means for anyone to deepen their understanding of how anthroposophy relates to and builds upon the natural sciences. At the time these presentations were given, serious voices had been raised denying Steiner's scientific credibility and denouncing his methods as unsound. Partly in response to such criticisms, Steiner here describes a means by which human beings can gain, through methodical and rigorous training, a direct experience of the spiritual dimension of life. He lays out the methodology of spiritual science, which is rooted in the scientific approach, outlining the three stages of higher knowledge --imagination, inspiration, and intuition --and describing the inner processes that lead from intellectual thinking to these higher modes of cognition. Ultimately, what Steiner proposes is not a deviation from the natural sciences but their expansion and development beyond unnecessary boundaries --that is, the establishment of anthroposophical spiritual science as a recognized method and practice of scientific research. This book is a translation from German of Das Verhältnis der Anthroposophie zur Naturwissenschaft, 1st edition (GA 75, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland, 2010).
Published in 1904 (CW 10) "Not everyone can immediately achieve spiritual vision; but the discoveries of those who have it can be health-giving life nourishment for all. The results of supersensible knowledge, when properly employed in life, prove to be not impractical, but rather, practical in the highest sense.... The acquisition of higher knowledge is not the end, but the means to an end; the end consists in the attainment, thanks to this knowledge, of greater and truer self-confidence, a higher degree of courage, and a magnanimity and perseverance such as cannot, as a rule, be acquired in the lower world." This is the 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. "The methods by which a student is prepared for the reception of higher knowledge are minutely prescribed. The direction he is to take is traced with unfading, everlasting letters in the worlds of the spirit where the initiates guard the higher secrets. In ancient times, anterior to our history, the temples of the spirit were also outwardly visible; today, because our life has become so unspiritual, they are not to be found in the world visible to external sight; yet they are present spiritually everywhere, and all who seek may find them." Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment is a translation from German of the written work Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? (GA 10).
"This is my second effort to present geomancy as a whole to the public consciousness. I wrote my first book on this subject in German more than ten years ago, titled School of Geomancy (Schule der Geomantie, Knaur, Munich, 1996). However, since that time my knowledge of geomancy, coupled with my practical field work, has evolved and deepened to the extent that I was compelled to write a completely new book." --Marko Pogačnik Marko Pogačnik has written several books based on the results of his research into and practice of what he terms geomancy. In this book, he presents the fundamental research and principles behind this new science of the spirit. The author writes: Geomancy is an ancient word denoting knowledge of the invisible and visible dimensions of the Earth and its landscapes. I see it as an essential complement to modern geography, which is interested exclusively in one level of reality, the material level of existence. To convey the idea that geomantic knowledge in a very specific way complements the material point of view of geography, I refer to geomancy as "sacred geography." By "sacred" I mean that the task of geomancy in our present day is not simply to foster public interest in etheric, emotional and spiritual levels of places and landscapes, but also to promote a deeper, more loving, and more responsible relationship toward the Earth, the Cosmos, and all beings, visible and invisible. This book is conceived not just as a theoretical introduction to the worlds of sacred geography, but primarily as a practical guide through different dimensions of places and landscapes. It includes more than 170 practical examples from different parts of the world, all of them presented as original drawings. Much of the text, drawings, and exercises are intended to describe and explain methods of pluri-dimensional perception, so that the reader will feel encouraged and supported to explore and develop her or his own experiences of the geomantic phenomena presented in the book. This is an essential text for understanding the vital work of sacred geometry called geomancy.
Speaking just months after the end of the First World War, Rudolf Steiner urges his audience to awaken to the practical relevance of spiritual knowledge. Serious engagement with contemporary spiritual-scientific concepts can awaken healthy forces of the will, which in turn facilitate constructive action in the outer world. Conversely, ideas that are remnants of a previous age – echoed in empty phrases and dogmas – only hinder our ability to think with the consciousness demanded by the times, destroying the potential for true social initiative. The historical context of these lectures was indeed disastrous, with inflation, hunger, homelessness and political extremism all rife. But Steiner advises that social conditions will only get worse if people don't engage with modern spiritual impulses. Thus – in contrast to the backward phenomenon of nationalism and the contemporary caricature of democracy – he introduces the future-oriented concept of social threefolding. He discusses manifold challenges, such as the decline of the West and the outmoded spiritual impulses of Jesuitism and Freemasonry – but also the positive path for an ascent of Western societies, genuine spiritual medicine, the true message of Easter, and the victory of the Archangel Michael. In several lectures, Rudolf Steiner speaks in some detail about the role and structure of the Catholic Church, the historical use of encyclicals and the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. The first full translation of this course features an introduction by Dorothy Hinkle-Uhlig, notes and an index.Seventeen lectures, Dornach, Mar.–Jul. 1920, GA 198
