Rudolf Steiner

This lecture on Raphael points to an ever greater inwardness or "internalizing" of the human soul in the future development of humanity. Steiner's large-format watercolours can be said to be an unmistakable further expression of this. Though it might seem improbable at first to link Raphael's works so directly with the painting impulse of Rudolf Steiner, separated as they are by four hundred years. An underlying relation becomes apparent, nonetheless, despite the manifest contrast. The Madonnas of Raphael will self-evidently never be surpassed. Yet, the future development of art, always "a daughter of the divine," implies, in Rudolf Steiner's sense, an ongoing spiritualization. We begin to recognize Raphael's relevance for today and for the future. A lecture given by Rudolf Steiner: from Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung. (Some Results of Spiritual Research). GA 62. Lecture IX, 30th January 1913 in Berlin. This unique English translation is by Peter Stebbing. Edited by James Stewart.

Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft ist ein unver nderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ern hrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres. Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur. Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquit ten erh ltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese B cher neu und tr gt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch f r die Zukunft bei.

Heinrich Ferstel said that architectural styles are not invented, but born out of the spiritual life of an entire age. Steiner agrees wholeheartedly with this statement, but then asks: Why does his age only recapitulate old styles? Why is it impotent to create a new style? The Goetheanum was meant to be a new impulse out of the clarity of anthroposophical striving. Like the Mystery Dramas, this new architectural impulse will contribute simultaneously to social renewal. The Goetheanum was meant to be real art, not abstraction. It was not meant to capture the ideas of anthroposophy in symbolic form, but rather to be another branch growing from the same root as anthroposophy. The head and the body need to be sculpted very differently. Color nuances should supersede line; we need to create out of color itself. Form should be the work of color. In the Goetheanum, two spaces represent human striving and the answer to that striving. The infinite sphere arrives as a new architectural form. Sculpting in wood is very different from sculpting in stone: in the former we need to carve out concavities, while in the latter we need to build up convexities. Evolution does not yield ever greater complexity; instead, it runs from the simple to the complex and then back to simplicity again. Everything in the building is organic. The old dynamic-mechanical principle of architecture gives way to Goethean metamorphosis.

As a spiritual teacher, Rudolf Steiner wrote many inspired and beautifully-crafted verses. Often they were given in relation to specific situations or in response to individual requests; sometimes they were offered simply to assist in the process of meditation. Regardless of their origins, they are uniformly powerful in their ability to connect the meditating individual with spiritual archetypes. Thus, the meditations provide valuable tools for developing experience and knowledge of subtle dimensions of reality. Matthew Barton has translated and selected Steiner's verses, sensitively arranging them by theme. In this collection - to promote courage and tranquility - Rudolf Steiner highlights the balancing, harmonizing forces of the heart, which are so much under attack in our cerebral culture. The verses aim to strengthen the heart by warming and enlivening thinking, allowing for genuine peace of mind; by drawing feeling into the dark depths of our will, in order to help develop courage; by nurturing a real sense of peace within the heart; and by helping us to help others. Together they provide a powerful antidote to the stresses and strains of modern life.

In the aftermath of the devastating First World War, Rudolf Steiner gained a reputation as a leading social thinker. One mainstream reviewer of his book Towards Social Renewal referred to it as `... perhaps the most widely read of all books on politics appearing since the war'. Steiner's proposals for the reconstruction of Europe and the rebuilding of society's crumbling social structure were thus publicly discussed as a serious alternative to both Communism and Capitalism. Steiner's `threefold' ideas involved the progressive independence of society's economic, political and cultural institutions. This would be realised through the promotion of human rights and equality in political life, freedom in the cultural realm and associative cooperation in economics or business. In this carefully assembled anthology of Steiner's lectures and writing, Stephen E. Usher gathers key concepts and insights to form a coherent picture of social threefolding. Apart from fundamental lectures on the theme, the volume also features the full content of Steiner's unique Memoranda of 1917. The original texts are complemented with the Editor's introduction, commentary and notes.

Mental and emotional disorders have reached epidemic levels in Western societies. Self-doubt, panic-attacks, anxiety disorders and personal fears of all kinds present major challenges to contemporary medical science. Rudolf Steiner's spiritual research offers a startlingly original and complementary contribution to the problem. True insight into psychological issues requires knowledge of the influences of spiritual beings, he suggests. In everyday life we are all confronted with metaphysical entities that can hinder or progress our development. Many forms of anxiety and self-doubt derive from such meetings on the border - or threshold - of our consciousness. Further, these `threshold experiences' are exacerbated today by a general loosening of the subtle bodies and components of the human soul. As these constitutional changes persist, says Rudolf Steiner, a condition of `dissociation' becomes increasingly common. A healthy emotional life will only be possible if individuals engage in a conscious practice of personal growth, strengthening their constitution through the action of the `I' or self. The expertly selected and collated texts in Self-Doubt offer numerous cognitive and practical ideas for the improvement of everyday mental and emotional health. Chapters include: The origin of error, fear, and nervousness; Crossing the threshold in the development of humanity and the individual; The polarity of shame and fear; The polarity of doubt and terrifying disorientation; The polarity of scepticism and claustrophobia, astraphobia, and agoraphobia; The origin of panic; Anxiety; The multilayered nature of terrifying disorientation; Healing aspects of the anthroposophical path of training; The spiritual-scientific qualities of fear compared with standardized diagnostic terms and as a basis for therapy.

As a spiritual teacher, Rudolf Steiner wrote many inspired and beautifully-crafted verses. Often they were given in relation to specific situations or in response to individual requests; sometimes they were offered simply to assist in the process of meditation. Regardless of their origins, they are uniformly powerful in their ability to connect the meditating individual with spiritual archetypes. Thus, the meditations provide valuable tools for developing experience and knowledge of subtle dimensions of reality. Matthew Barton has translated and selected Steiner's verses, sensitively arranging them by theme. In this collection of meditations for times of day and seasons of the year, Rudolf Steiner delves into the rhythms of nature and their relationship to human beings. The verses in the first part refer to the cycle of waking and sleeping, echoing the greater rhythms of birth and death. They provide an accompaniment for each day, gently reminding us where we have come from and where we are going. The second section focuses on the human being's passage through nature's changing seasons - a greater cycle of sleeping and waking. Together they offer us a spiritual light for our journey through life.

In this innovative anthology, Angela Lord presents a unique series of commentaries on art, aesthetics and colour by three of western culture’s greatest intellects. Her comparative study of the works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Rudolf Steiner illustrates how each of these towering thinkers employed an individual and groundbreaking approach. Yet, remarkably, there are common threads that weave through their collective works that have previously been overlooked. By selecting and extracting specific quotations and arranging them in particular sequences, Lord throws light on texts that have often been restricted to theological and academic study. Through this exposure, she reveals their relevance to the Arts today, showing how their content can stimulate an enhanced awareness of truth, beauty and knowledge in our lives. Art Aesthetics and Colour also offers us the opportunity to reinterpret the works of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in the light of Rudolf Steiner’s contemporary spiritual-scientific insights. In addition to the extensive quotations from the three historical figures, Lord provides brief biographies, an introduction, notes and a bibliography. The book is well-illustrated throughout and includes colour plates.

These Parisian lectures can stand on their own as a crystalline distillation of the life between death and rebirth. To the earthly eye, death means only decomposition. But the eye that has been raised to the higher cognitive powers of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition sees that death is only the beginning of a spiritual drama, climaxing in our work with the hierarchies to form a new physical body and new karma.

These six lectures, collected in one volume, may be the best overview ever written on what karma is and how it works. In the first lecture, Steiner presents the various universal laws that exist, so one may gain an understanding of how karma fits in and relates to them. Once the reader is prepared for an explanation of human destiny and our place in creation, lecture two moves forward and covers this nicely. The third lecture shows how our use of freedom works with karma, plus where we go between lives and what that is like. The fourth lecture reveals how karma appears and develops in one's life. It covers how we come into this world prepared to use it, including the fact that we have, hidden within us, a karmic impulse that may direct our future path. Talk five covers the inner influences we have that effect karma, both mental and physical in nature, and how people often fail to understand how cause and effect works on the inner levels. The final lecture outlines the essential nature of the human being in great detail. It presents a three-fold hierarchy using conscious and unconscious elements, which explains how karma is experienced, generated and used. This book is a must for anyone who wants to gain a complete understanding of karma and how it works.

Rudolf Steiner continues his extraordinary series of lectures on karma with these three theoretical offerings. The first invites us to reconceive the entire notion of causality, which differs substantially across the kingdoms of nature. In the mineral kingdom, we see a simultaneity of causes in the physical. In the plant kingdom, there is a simultaneity of causes in the physical and supra-physical. The animal kingdom reveals past supra-physical causes of present effects. And finally the human kingdom shows past physical causes of present effects in the physical. Lecture Two is devoted to the interweaving of the hierarchies in karma. The Archai, Archangeloi, and Angeloi are bound up with our feelings of well-being or discomfort. Our sympathies and antipathies are expressions of the Dynameis, Exousiai, and Kyriotetes. And finally the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones are responsible for the events and experiences in our lives. The third lecture traces out the complex interactions between freedom and karmic necessity. In normal consciousness, we are not at all aware of karmic necessity, but we are aware of our freedom. Initiation reveals the realm of karmic necessity, but we are simultaneously reconciled to the notion, because we see and accept that it has to be. Freedom and karmic necessity are ultimately reconciled at a higher level of consciousness.

The first lecture in the important cycle contains many practical karma exercises, and the second is a subtle comparison of the results of such exercises with ordinary memory. Unlike normal "representational" memory, which is lost to the life after death, the intuited higher self "remembered" as a result of karma exercises in more of a feeling nature, and it is something much closer to what can be experienced in the life after death. The third lecture is the broadest, arguing the absolute centrality of reincarnation and karma to anthroposophy. Indeed, some of Steiner's assertion are quite surprising in this regard.

"My first lectures within the groups that arose from the theosophical movement had to be adjusted to the soul disposition of those people. They had assimilated theosophic literature and were accustomed to certain modes of expression. Initially, in order to be understood, I had to remain with those modes. Nor was it possible for me to use my own terms until, over the course of time, the work had progressed. As a result, the lecture material as it was made available through notes taken during the ?rst years of the anthroposophic work gives a true, inner picture spiritually. It portrays the path I adopted to gradually make spiritual knowledge known, so that what was closer could lead to an understanding of what was more remote. But this approach must really be seen in light of its inner quality." --Rudolf Steiner (from his autobiography) In Berlin, just past the turn of the twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner, then a relatively unknown writer, educator, and editor, first began his spiritual teaching activity under the auspices of the Theosophical Society. The gatherings at this time were small, often being held in private homes, and therefore, in terms of size and location, intimate. Immediately after assuming leadership of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Rudolf Steiner began a comprehensive program of teaching, at first within the Berlin Branch of the Theosophical Society. The notes from nineteen of those early lectures and four private lessons form the content of this volume. Moving back and forth between Eastern theosophical terminology and Western esoteric tradition, searching for words and pictures, for the first time Steiner was presenting the results of his spiritual-scientific research to small groups of people longing for deeper truths.