Customer Reviews
Dumbfoundingly masterful spiritual text - By: Angus Jenkinson, 06 Nov 2005 
I think I should add to a former review. This is the classic Steiner spiritual-scientific text on spiritual development & the cosmos. The juxtaposition of spiritual & scientific seems both impossible & forbidding, & that is a fair description of the body of this book. At the same time, for the thousands who have studied it, it is the benchmark of spiritual wisdom & of a new Western practice of knowledge that unites what has otherwise been so utterly divided. I should tell you that this is a book that is utterly weird & wonderful, challenging & stimulating, & hard. Steiner deliberately wrote it to be difficult. If that seems odd, it was first to put off the sensation seeker (given the amount of sensational stuff within) & secondly because, given its thought architecture, the process of study generates intellectual & spiritual development,in the same way that studying or practising any other subject cultivates abilities within it. Don't believe me, try it.
You would probably not believe a word of it if there was not so much elsein Steiner's life & work that proves his amazing rigour, practicality & genius. For Steiner, practical life & spiritual development always went hand-in-hand, & this was certainly true for him too. His wide-ranging initiatives include Steiner education, a method which has given birth to some 700 or 800 highly appreciated schools worldwide. Like his spiritual path, this is an education designed to cultivate the free & individual adult. He was also a noted artist, sculptor, choreographer, playwright & architect, a social & economic scientist, & developer of a form of advanced organic agriculture known as biodynamics, which is recognised as an important agricultural modelin Germany & is much esteemedin viniculture. He also warned against feeding cows reconstituted meat-based foods, describing the kind of illness which we now know as BSE. Finally,in collaboration with a colleague he developed a complete & advanced medical system based loosely on homoeopathy but going much further. This is an astonishing record - & I have not covered everything - & visiblein the tens of thousands of initiatives inspired by his work around the globe.
For many, his work as a philosopher is his supreme achievement. According to Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind, Steiner's epistemology along with Goethe & Hegel, & outlinedin The Philosophy of Freedom (aka Intuitive Thinking as a Path of Knowledge) is the answer to the dilemmas of the Descartian-Hegelian paradigm. Basically, it bridges the gap between the rational scientific outlook & the spiritual, putting body, mind & spirit back together.
This astounding book both outlines the practical outcome of this philosophy as a path of spiritual development & the spiritual/scientific results that can be achieved. The book outlines the history of human developmentin the cosmos & the cycle of a human life from birth to birth, as well as how to cultivate & develop it. This is a path that that exactly explores what conventional science consciously ignores, the qualitative & supersensible.
This book focuses very much on the process of development while giving an understanding of why & how those processes have taken place, giving another spin on the evolutionary model. For those more interestedin the practice of spiritual development, his relatively introductory text Knowledge of Higher Worlds (aka How to Know Higher Worlds) may be a better alternative start. Theosophy is his introductory systematic outline of the human beingin the cosmos & is another possible starting point.
Amazingly important account of the spiritual world - By: angus@stepping-stones.org, 28 Oct 2000 This is a major work by the modern esoteric master, Rudolf Steiner. He describes the spiritual history of the Earth, taking into account not only past ages like Atlantis but also past incarnations of the earth! He also describes the modrn path of spiritual development, the spiritual energies of the human being & the relationship to angels, evil & much much more.
