Beginning at the turn of the century, Rudolf Steiner began to express a passionate interest in Christianity. For him, the event he called the "Mystery of Golgotha" is more than the central event of Christianity; it is, in fact, the turning point in time for all human and earthly evolution. In his Autobiography, Steiner clarified his views on Christianity: Some of what I said and wrote during that period 1890s] seems to contradict the way I described Christianity later on. This is because, when I wrote the word Christianity, I was referring to the teachings of a "world beyond"...

5 lectures, Dornach, March 31 - April 8, 1923 (GA 223)
Rudolf Steiner

Human beings must attain an esoteric maturity in order to think not merely abstractly, but to be able to think so concretely that they can again become festival-creating. Then it will be possible again to unite something spiritual with the cycle of sense phenomena.

These five lectures were given at Easter, 1923. Rudolf Steiner, in a fully conscious way, laid a foundation for celebrating the Christian festivals --Christmas, Easter, St. John's, and Michaelmas. This is begun with a description of how the...

Steiner tells us that Mark was especially able to reveal Christ as a cosmic being of his greatness and power, because, after having been a pupil of Peter, he moved to Alexandria during a time when Jewish philosophy and theology was at it's peak. There he absorbed the best aspects and views of pagan gnosis.

Mark was able to learn how humankind came arose from the spiritual world and how the luciferic and ahrimanic forces are taken into the human soul. Mark was able to accept everything that was told to him by pagan gnosis concerning our human origin out of the cosmos when our planet came...

Initiation enables a person to see, understand, and communicate what may be observed with spiritual eyes. St. John's text arises from such an initiation. It addresses the fundamental questions of existence that every human being asks: Where are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going? And because it arises from esoteric Christian vision, it emphasizes the task of the individual: What am I, and what is my purpose now in this era of cosmic and human evolution? These talks by Rudolf Steiner unveil the mysteries of John's vision and show it to be a profound description of Christian...

In this course, designed for students and professionals in the stage arts, Rudolf Steiner begins with a fundamental and spiritually-rooted appreciation of human speech and what actually takes place during human communication. Speech is a spiritual activity as well as an art form, lending itself to real interaction with both higher spiritual worlds and the human world of social conversation.

Steiner shows that speech is a powerful tool for any serious dramatist in conveying the reality of worlds, whether visible or invisible, to the individual souls in the audience.

This...

This seminal work asserts that free spiritual activity--understood as the human ability to think and act independently of one's physical nature--is the most appropriate path today for inner development and true self-knowledge. This is not simply a volume of philosophy, but also a friendly guide to practice and the experience of living thinking. Rudolf Steiner provides a step-by-step account of how we can come to experience living, intuitive thinking, the conscious experience of pure spirit.

Since this book was written more than a century ago, many have tried to discover the kind of new...

Topics in these eight lectures include:

• Lecture 1, the first reference to eurhythmy; deals with the fourth mystery play, The Souls' Awakening.
• Lecture 2: Ahriman and Lucifer are both necessary and cannot be driven away, but must be balanced.
• Lecture 3: Elemental world; the first condition is the ability to transform into a foreign being.
• Lecture 4: In ascent from elemental world to spiritual world; everything of the sensory world must be abandoned.
• Lecture 5: Professor Capesius.
• Lecture 6: Roman letter Ahriman.
• ...

Steiner begins this work by pointing to our awareness of a second self that guides us through life. It guides us as infants and children as we attain vertical balance in space, learn to communicate in community, and begin to think in the world. Through this initial wisdom (which is still connected to the spiritual hierarchies) we enter the physical realm and then, as we grow, we exchange it for self-awareness and memory.

What--or who--is this wisdom? Steiner suggests that it is connected with the "higher self" of humankind that lived in Jesus between his baptism and the...

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...

This book introduces a new way for thinking about, creating, and viewing art. Rudolf Steiner saw his task as the renewal of the lost unity of science, the arts, and religion; thus, he created a new, cognitive scientific and religious art in anthroposophy. The implications of his act --recognized by such diverse artists as Wassily Kandinsky and Joseph Beuys --are only now coming fully to light.

In his thorough introduction of more than a hundred pages, Michael Howard takes readers through these thought-provoking chapters:

• Is Art Dead?
• To Muse or Amuse
• Artistic Activity...