Customer Service 703-661-1594

Esoteric Development

Lectures and Writings

Paperback
January 2003
9780880105248
More details
  • Publisher
    SteinerBooks
  • Published
    1st January 2003
  • ISBN 9780880105248
  • Language English
  • Pages 208 pp.
$20.00

“You should not have any mystical ideas about meditation, nor should you think it is easy. Meditation must be completely clear, in the modern sense. Patience and inner soul energy are needed, and, above all, it depends on an act that no one else can do for you: it requires an inner resolve that you stick to. When you begin to meditate, you are performing the only completely free activity there is in human life” (Rudolf Steiner).

This completely revised edition provides an ordered sequence of statements by Steiner on the development of higher, suprasensory knowing—Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition.

Nine chapters take the reader from the idea of inner development, through the cultural and evolutionary need for higher knowing, and then to examples of the practices and inner gestures required by this work. Steiner describes the necessary steps and stages, always insisting on the free, individual, and cognitive character of anthroposophic spiritual research.

This essential inner guide is for anyone on a path of true spiritual development.

CONTENTS:

Introduction by Stephen E. Usher

1. Esoteric Development
2. The Psychological Basis of Spiritual Science
3. Suprasensory Knowledge
4. The Attainment of Spiritual Knowledge
5. General Requirements for Esoteric Development: Guidance in Esoteric Training
6. The Great Initiates
7. The Rosicrucian Spiritual Path
8. Imagination Knowledge and Artistic Imagination
9. Three Decisions on the Path of Imagination Knowledge: Loneliness, Fear, and Dread

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner (b. Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner, 1861–1925) was born in the small village of Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Croatia), where he grew up. As a young man, he lived in Weimar and Berlin, where he became a well-published scientific, literary, and philosophical scholar, known especially for his work with Goethe’s scientific writings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he began to develop his early philosophical principles into an approach to systematic research into psychological and spiritual phenomena. Formally beginning his spiritual teaching career under the auspices of the Theosophical Society, Steiner came to use the term Anthroposophy (and spiritual science) for his philosophy, spiritual research, and findings. The influence of Steiner’s multifaceted genius has led to innovative and holistic approaches in medicine, various therapies, philosophy, religious renewal, Waldorf education, education for special needs, threefold economics, biodynamic agriculture, Goethean science, architecture, and the arts of drama, speech, and eurythmy. In 1924, Rudolf Steiner founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world. He died in Dornach, Switzerland.