Esoteric Development
Nine selected lectures and writings
by Rudolf Steiner

Esoteric Development consists of two articles and seven lectures by Rudolf Steiner, written or delivered between 1905 and 1923, in which he describes the disciplines and exercises that are necessary to develop reliable spiritual perception in a healthy and balanced manner.

The limitations of our physical senses seems to set limits to the compass of our knowledge. Yet Rudolf Steiner speaks in "The Great Initiates" lecture of this volume, of never setting "limits on our capacity to know, seeing it instead as something to be both widened and uplifted." He describes it as the greatest arrogance to regard one's own capacity for knowledge as if it were decisive and to declare that it is not possible to transcend it. Steiner was fully aware of the difficulties caused by this apparent restriction of knowledge because he had developed his own capacities for knowledge to a level that exceeded those typical of the most gifted representatives of his time. The possibilities of such development, and certainly Steiner's own faculties, were naturally not acknowledged by his contemporaries, whose thinking was steeped in the natural-scientific view that human development was bound to biology and social influences. The idea that the soul could develop faculties independently of the body was both foreign and repugnant to the materialistic wisdom of the day.

Yet Steiner was fully aware of the apparent barriers to knowledge and also of the "non-comprehension" that he would be met with from many of the learned scholars, scientists, priests and other authorities of his day. In spite of this, he felt bound to offer the fruits of his knowledge and the means of attaining it to the many who were instinctively seeking something that would give their lives greater meaning and purpose than the naturalists seemed to offer. To this end he gave lecture courses, wrote essays and books and even ran an esoteric school to help those seekers who felt this need to renew their life through spiritual knowledge and the development of their own spiritual faculties. This volume contains some of Steiner's own teachings and guidance on how to proceed towards the development of such faculties.

"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

Steiner Books
172pp; paperback
ISBN: 0-88010-524-0
 

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