Esoteric Lessons, 1904-1909

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner
ISBN: 9780880106108
Category : Occultism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Notes written from memory by the participants and meditation verses by Rudolf Steiner (CW 266/1) "Rudolf Steiner constantly sought the right soil for certain presentations, and so it could happen that he communicated, as a trial, something from his spiritual research to quite a small circle, sometimes only to three, two, and even only one person. At the same time, he was experimenting to see how far modern consciousness could bear such matters. It was some new research that he presented in this way to a few people. One could ask questions and discuss things. But, after a while, one noticed that he took the same matter to a larger circle--that is, to the circle of people who formed an esoteric group. Then it would happen that he brought it before all the members of the Anthroposophical Society. Moreover, if one waited a little longer, he began to give public lectures on the same subject. Esotericism...had to be implanted step by step in present-day consciousness." --Carl Unger (Oct. 29, 1928) To read this book is to be part of Rudolf Steiner's Esoteric School, to experience the growth and development of Anthroposophy from within. First and most essential here is the primacy of practice. Steiner stresses attention and concentration. We waste much of our time and energy on thoughts and feelings that to nowhere. Meditation--concentration on a living thought, an idea of higher origin--begins the process of self-gathering. Controlling our thoughts, we begin to form our "mental" (etheric) body; ordering our memories, we begin to work on our astral body. These two tasks are our preliminary goal. "We must make our life into a school for learning." Humility is the key--when the world becomes our teacher, we must become humble. With the beginning of these esoteric lessons, the path is deepened. We witness Rudolf Steiner the spiritual teacher in action. Throughout the lessons, Steiner moves between the so-called Christian-Gnostic path and the theosophical framework of the Masters. As the years unfold, however, the lessons move from the framework given by H. P. Blavatsky toward a deeper, more universal and, at the same time, more contemporary focus. Steiner reveals that behind what Blavatsky brought is the wisdom of Atlantis, which today must come to life again. Here, Christian Rosenkreutz, the Rosicrucians, and the "old philosophers" (alchemists) become important, for it was their task to bring this wisdom, now "enchristed," into the West. This volume is the English translation of «Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden, Gedächtnisaufzeichnungen von Teilnehmern. Band.1, 1904-1909» (GA 266/1).

Physiology and Healing

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855844427
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Book Description
''The intention is to take a practical subject and show how our spiritual science with anthroposophical orientation truly can play an effective role in everyday life.' – Rudolf Steiner Following his first major lecture course for medical practitioners, Rudolf Steiner sought to elaborate and deepen his 'extension' of the art of healing from a spiritual-scientific perspective. In this collection of addresses, discussions, question-and-answer sessions and lectures – running parallel to his major medical cycles – Steiner comments on contemporary medicine's emphasis on experimental, materially-based research and its subsequent lack of attention to therapy. Steiner's intention is not to detract from developments in medical science but to build on them with spiritual science – not quackery but a true art of medicine. The medical practitioner has an important task: diseases must be cured, and it is wrong not to intervene and simply to allow 'karma to take its course'. Speaking to audiences ranging from members of the general public to small groups of medical professionals, Steiner offers new insights into our understanding of human organs such as the brain, kidneys and liver, as well as the efficacy of healing substances including arsenic, sulphur, arnica and essential plant oils. He studies a broad range of specific medical conditions, giving advice on cancer, hysteria, rheumatism, gout, skin eruptions, typhoid, diabetes, haemophilia, syphilis, gonorrhoea, asthma, glaucoma, leukaemia, smallpox, insomnia, and childhood diseases such as measles. His commentaries on a raft of contrasting subjects – such as psychiatry, sexual maturity, memory, poisoning and detoxification – present challenging perspectives for patients and medical practitioners. Steiner's surprisingly non-dogmatic advice on vaccination, for example, gives a refreshingly balanced, and perhaps unexpected, point of view. This volume also includes a lecture on eurythmy therapy, a comprehensive introduction, index and notes, and nine full colour plates of Rudolf Steiner's blackboard drawings.

Education for Special Needs

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855844095
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
‘Essentially we do not really have the right to talk about normality or abnormality in a child’s inner life, nor indeed in the inner life of human beings altogether... One does not gain much from such labelling, and the first thing to happen should be that the physician or the teacher rejects such an assessment, and goes further than saying that something is clever or sensible according to the way people are habitually thinking.’ – Rudolf Steiner Speaking in 1924, when general attitudes to people with special needs were far from enlightened, Rudolf Steiner gave this seminal course of lectures to a small group of teachers and doctors as a fundamental basis for their future work. In the cultural context of the time, regressive ideas such as Social Darwinism and Eugenics were not only tolerated but popular (some 15 years after these lectures were delivered, the Nazis were to initiate their so-called ‘euthanasia’ programme). In contrast, Steiner – who as a young man had successfully tutored a boy with special needs – was devoted to the progressive task of special education and, in the words of one of those present, ‘...gave the course with pleasure and satisfaction’. In the twelve lectures, Rudolf Steiner describes polarities of illness and derives courses of treatment from a comprehensive analysis. He considers many individual cases in detail and gives indications on therapeutic exercises, diet and medicine. The ‘I’ (or self), he states, relates directly to the physical body, and spirit and soul need to be taken into consideration when making diagnoses. Throughout the course Steiner gives valuable advice regarding the educator’s own development, emphasizing the need for enthusiasm, humour and courage. As with Steiner’s lectures on agriculture, which stimulated the birth of the worldwide biodynamic movement, this single course has had a huge international impact, inspiring the founding of hundreds of schools and communities for people with special needs – encompassing both the Camphill and Steiner special education movements. Revolutionary in its approach, the far-reaching perspectives of these lectures are a living source of inspiration to both professionals in the field and parents and others seeking spiritual insight. This new edition features a fresh translation, introductory material, notes, colour plates and an index.

UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855845423
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
In the uncertainty following the end of the First World War, Rudolf Steiner perceived a unique opportunity to establish a healthy social and political constitution. He began lecturing throughout post-war Germany, often to large audiences, about his social ideas. Here, speaking to a more intimate grouping at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, Steiner seeks to deepen the themes of social threefolding, showing specifically how new social thinking is integral to anthroposophy. Steiner speaks of the superficiality of the materialistic view of history, originating with the economic shift amongst the population at the time of the Reformation. Back in Egyptian-Chaldean times, initiates ruled out of spiritual impulses. Later, in the Greco-Roman period, priests had power over their congregations. Today, homo economicus – or ‘economic man’ – has become the dominant idea, with the capitalist and the banker taking control. But the healing of social relationships can only come about through different modes of thought; the life of spirit must be separated not only from politics but also from economics. True social understanding allows for comprehension of karma – the appreciation of each person’s individual destiny. In parallel, says Steiner, we should work towards a global consciousness, as true social ideas are founded on people feeling themselves to be citizens of the world. In an important corollary, Steiner studies the incarnations of three significant spiritual beings in human evolution: Lucifer, Christ and Ahriman. Lucifer incarnated in the third pre-Christian millennium, Christ incarnated at the dawn of a new age, whilst an incarnation of Ahriman in the West is immanent. Ahriman is preparing this incarnation by insidiously promoting various ideas, for example that economic security is sufficient for healthy public life. A new wisdom must be achieved out of free human will, says Steiner, or else we will succumb to Ahriman.

Understanding Healing

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855843811
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
13 lectures, Dornach, Jan. 2-Apr. 25, 1924 (CW 316) Steiner's third lecture course to physicians has a character completely different from previous presentations. Delivered in response to a group of young doctors, it offers unique, groundbreaking insights into the practice and art of healing. Steiner speaks about the influence of cosmic and earthly forces--the periphery and center--on the human being. Proper understanding of these processes enables the physician to comprehend the actions of plants and minerals used in anthroposophic medicines, and thus to prescribe appropriate and individually specific remedies. Steiner paints a picture of the human being as a complex confluence of the forces of heredity, forces from the cosmos, and an individual's unique spiritual nature. The physician has to understand these relationships in order to be able to help effectively when they are out of balance. Steiner stresses the importance of personal development for physicians, and offers plentiful instructions for a meditative practice intrinsic to their work. Among a wealth of other topics, Steiner addresses inflammation and excessive growth; the scarlet fever and measles; the importance of a child's food and breast milk; the functions of the liver, heart, head, and skeleton; the incarnation process; karma as a guide for the physician; morality as a force flowing in from the cosmos; the cosmic trinity of Saturn, Sun, and Moon in healthy and sick people; and the human heart's involvement in thinking. Included here are Steiner's answers to questions and the first newsletter from the Medical Section, with a key meditation for physicians. This volume also features 18 full-color plates of Steiner's blackboard drawings, a comprehensive introduction, index and notes. READ A REVIEW OF THIS BOOK BY BOBBY MATHERNE This volume is a translation from German of Meditative Betrachtungen und Anleitungen zur Vertiefung der Heilkunst (GA 316). Eight of the lectures in this volume were previously translated and published as Course for Young Doctors.

How the Spiritual World Projects Into Physical Existence

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855844044
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
‘By cultivating spiritual thoughts here on earth we can provide nourishment for the dead... When fields lie fallow they produce no crops to feed humanity and people may die of starvation. The dead cannot die of starvation, of course; all they can do is suffer when spiritual life lies fallow on earth.’ – Rudolf Steiner The founding of the Anthroposophical Society in 1913 marked a major change in Rudolf Steiner’s work. Although Steiner had always been an independent spiritual researcher, the break with the theosophists removed all constraints, allowing for a full flowering of anthroposophy. These lectures, presented to audiences in Germany, France and Sweden, are filled with a freshness and vitality that reflect this new beginning, providing intriguing glimpses of great themes that Steiner was to develop in the years ahead. A predominant topic here is that of death. Rudolf Steiner seeks to explain how people on earth can reach the dead in a non-mediumistic way, and how such interaction between ‘living’ and ‘dead’ is mutually beneficial. Startlingly, he states that people who do not recognize the being of Lucifer during their earthly life – who have not ‘already got to intuit and know the luciferic impulses in the human soul properly whilst here in life’ – will be ‘vampirized’ by this being after death. Rudolf Steiner also elaborates on the activities of the adversary beings in present-day civilization – spiritual powers that play a necessary role in Earth evolution – and how we can counteract them. The longer someone can stay alive, for example, is a victory over Ahriman’s activity. Even the losing of teeth has beneficial aspects, allowing us to ‘... gain certain impulses and these overcome Ahriman’. Steiner relates the actions of such spiritual entities to child development too, indicating the various influences in the seven-year cycles of growth. Also included are lectures on the Christian festivals and various artworks, including ‘The Triumph of Death’ in the Composanto cemetery at Pisa, which reveals great secrets of humanity’s evolution. Whatever the subject addressed, it soon becomes apparent that these lectures were not just relevant to Steiner’s audience in 1913, but also speak to contemporary souls around the world seeking spiritual orientation and understanding.

Disease, Karma and Healing

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855844400
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Today, illness is almost universally regarded as either a nuisance or a grave misfortune. In contrast to this conventional thinking, Rudolf Steiner places the suffering caused by disease in a broad vista that includes an understanding of karma and personal metamorphosis. Illness comes to expression in the physical body, but mostly does not originate in it, says Steiner, and thus a key part of the physician's work involves gaining insight into the whole nature of an individual – his essential core being. From this perspective, illness offers us the opportunity for deeper healing. Throughout this volume Rudolf Steiner draws our attention to the greater scope of the smallest phenomena – even a seemingly insignificant headache. He casts vivid light on things we normally take for granted, such as the human capacity to laugh or cry, and in the process broadens our vision of human existence. The apparently mundane human experiences of forgetting and remembering are intrinsic to our humanity, for example, and have unsuspected moral and spiritual dimensions. Steiner's insights are never merely 'lofty' or nebulously 'spiritual' but time and again connect with the minutest realities of everyday life. In these 18 lectures, delivered on a weekly basis as part of an ongoing course covering 'the whole field of spiritual science', Steiner elaborates in detail on the diverse interplay of the human being's constituting aspects (physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego or 'I') in relation to rhythmic processes, developing consciousness, the history of human evolution, and our connection with the cosmos. Within this broad canvas, some of his themes acquire a very distinctive focus – such as vivid accounts of the 'intimate history' of Christianity, 'creating out of nothing', the interior of the earth, and health and illness. Other topics include: the nature of pain, suffering, pleasure and bliss; the four human group souls of lion, bull, eagle and man; the significance of the Ten Commandments; the nature of original sin; the deed of Christ and the adversary powers of Lucifer, Ahriman and the Asuras; evolution and involution; the Atlantean period – and even Friedrich Nietzsche's madness!

LIFE OF THE HUMAN SOUL

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855846152
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
How are we connected to the world around us? This question, says Rudolf Steiner, is one that lives subliminally, drawing us into the depths of the psyche. There, our candle of consciousness tends to flicker and go out. But spiritual schooling can relight it, so that we learn to perceive realms of our being beyond the restricted self.Whilst Steiner was undertaking major lecture tours of Germany and England, he took time to address his followers at the world centre of anthroposophy in Dornach, Switzerland. He speaks here on three major topics: 'The Life of the Human Soul', 'Spiritual Striving in Relation to Earth's Evolution' and 'The Contrast Between East and West'. The common theme, however, is our mutual responsibility for what the human being and the world will eventually become – which, according to Steiner, is far from a foregone conclusion. Even the way we think can change and affect the future: the degree, for example, to which we concentrate our picturing in meditation, infusing head thinking with warmth of heart.Rudolf Steiner reveals a hugely complex picture of interrelationships between humanity and the cosmos. Our head, heart, lungs and limbs all reveal subtly different qualities of connection with the invisible realities that continue to sustain us. Our eyes, for instance, only gradually evolved into organs of sight and were once vital organs, as our lungs are now. The lungs, in turn, will similarly evolve to provide us with another form of perception.As is usually the case, Steiner addresses a wide variety of topics in addition to those above. Included in this volume are thoughts on the significance of the cinema; the nature of the halo; technology as the 'true foundation' of the modern worldview; asceticism in the Middle Ages; the world of machines and the world of rite and worship; yoga and modern meditation exercises; pain as an awakener of knowledge; the emergence of the belief in ghosts; and the connection between stomach acid and soul qualities.

The Christ Impulse

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855844486
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
Rudolf Steiner's teachings of Christ are unique. Christ, he says, is an objective universal force, existing independently of Christian churches and confessions, and working for the whole of humanity. The impulse that Christ brought to earth acts for the advancement of all people, irrespective of religion, creed or race. Among the myriad other themes that emerge here are the introduction of the 'I' (or self) in human development and its connection to Christ and the meaning of the Ten.

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: Rudolf Steiner Press
ISBN: 1855844710
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 399

Book Description
'If one is unable to conceive of the Christ mystery as a true reality, one also cannot develop any ideas and concepts relating to the rest of world existence that are imbued with reality, which really penetrate to the truth '. – Rudolf SteinerIn a series of 17 lectures, Rudolf Steiner throws new light on the historical background and esoteric meaning of what he refers to as the central event of human and earthly history: the Christ mystery or 'the Mystery of Golgotha'. Basing his commentaries on personal spiritual research, Steiner emphasizes the key nature of the Mystery of Golgotha, through which '...something was accomplished which has to do not with the moral order alone but with the whole world-order in its entirety'. This relates to a transformation of the spiritual environment of the earth and a potentially radical change in human consciousness.Building on the core themes of this course, Steiner presents a variety of fascinating topics, including: original sin and the idea of resurrection; faith and knowledge; the nature of sleep and the riddle of fatigue; the violation of the mysteries by the Roman Emperors; the teachings of Mani and Augustine; our relationship to the dead in spiritualistic séances; and the correspondence between the Platonic year, a day in a person's life and a human life-time.Although first delivered to audiences a century ago, these lectures have lost none of their resonance; indeed, their essential message is perhaps more relevant than ever. They are published here in a new translation and for the first time in a complete English edition.'So let us endeavour to make spiritual science our own not merely as a teaching but as a language, and then wait until we find the questions in this language that we may address to Christ. He will answer, yes He will answer!'