12 lectures, Berlin, October 23, 1909-December 16, 1911 (CW 115)

In 1904, Steiner publicly described this classic account of the Western path of initiation. Beginning with the assumption 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 us through the stages of preparation, illumination, and initiation, from cultivating fundamental soul moods of reverence and tranquility to esoteric self-development. He also provides practical exercises for inner and outer observation and moral...

This written attempt to create a spiritual anthropology was found among Rudolf Steiner's unpublished works after his death.

Although fragmentary, this key work on "Anthroposophy" is of enormous interest and importance. It is work whose time has finally arrived. Here are the first steps toward the development of a true psychology of spirit, using a phenomenological approach to the human senses, the life processes, the I-experience, the human form, and the human relationship to higher spiritual worlds. Steiner struggled to express the concepts related in this book, since many of the terms...

8 lectures, Stuttgart, June 12-19, 1921 (CW 302)

In these eight talks on education for adolescent-aged young people, Steiner addressed the teachers of the first Waldorf school two years after it was first opened. A high school was needed, and Steiner wanted to provide a foundation for study and a guide for teachers already familiar with his approach to the human being, child development, and education based on spiritual science.

Steiner's education affirms the being of every child within the world of spirit. This approach works within the context of the child's gradual entry...

15 discussions with teachers of the Stuttgart Waldorf School, Aug. 21 - Sept. 6, 1919
3 lectures on the curriculum, Sept. 6, 1919 (CW 295)

For two weeks, prior to the opening of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Rudolf Steiner intensively prepared the individuals he had chosen to become the first Waldorf teachers. At 9:00 a.m. each day, he gave the course now translated as Foundations of Human Experience; at 11:00 a.m., Practical Advice to Teachers; and then, after lunch, from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., he held the informal "discussions" published in this book....

These dazzling, radical lectures were given one month before the opening of the first Waldorf School--following two years of intense preoccupation with the social situation in Germany as World War I ended and society sought to rebuild itself.

Well aware of the dangerous tendencies present in modern culture that undermine a true social life--such as psychic torpor and boredom, universal mechanization, and a growing cynicism--Steiner recognized that any solution must address not only economic and legal issues but also that of a free spiritual life.

Steiner also saw the need to...

5 lectures, Stuttgart, April 8-11, 1924 (CW 308)

These talks were given during an educational conference in 1924. They are the last public lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Germany. According to one member of his audience, "Seventeen hundred people listened to him; the prolonged applause from this great crowd at the end of every lecture was deeply moving, while at the end of the last lecture the applause became an ovation that seemed as if it would never end." This kind of adoration was the result not only of who Steiner was as an individual but of what he accomplished as well. People...

As early as 1884, while tutoring a boy with special needs, Steiner began a lifelong interest in applying spiritual knowledge to the practical aspects of life. Steiner originally published the essay at the core of this book in 1907. It represents his earliest ideas on education, in which he lays out the soul spiritual processes of human development, describing the need to understand how the being of a child develops through successive "births," beginning with the physical body's entry into earthly life, and culminating in the emergence of the I-being with adulthood.

Also included here are...

5 lectures, Bern, April 13-17, 1924 (CW 309)

These lectures on Waldorf education were given as a course during Easter week, 1924, in Bern. Although these talks were given more than eighty years ago, they remain remarkably contemporary. Every word still resonates with passion and dedication to the human adventure.

"We must develop an art of education that can lead us out of the social chaos into which we have fallen during the last few years and decades.... There is no escaping this chaos unless we can find a way to bring spirituality into human souls through education, so that human...

10 lectures in various cities, February 3-March 29, 1913 (CW 145)

On February 3, 1913, the first General Meeting of the newly formed Anthroposophical Society was convened in Berlin. Six weeks later, in Holland, Rudolf Steiner spoke for the first time to an anthroposophic audience in a detailed, intimate way about individual esoteric training and the subtle effects of spiritual development on every level of one's being.

Beginning with questions regarding the body's experience of food and drink--meat, coffee, alcohol, and so on--he lays out the progression of...

Although Steiner did not often speak or write about love explicitly, love is at the very heart of his whole body of work and the foundation of his hopes for humankind and the Earth. Steiner teaches that, without love, nothing is possible; with love, however, we can do everything. Love is always "love of the not-yet." To love is to create; it is to selflessly enter the current of time that flows toward us from the future.

Reality, true knowledge of reality, is impossible without love. Only through love can we truly know as we are know, can we encounter the world and its beings in a...