Download the article: Religious and Moral Education in the Light of Spiritual Science
The following is excerpted from a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner at the Hague on November 4, 1922. It
appears for the first time in English translation as part of a collection entitled Education, Teaching, and the Practical Life (available from AWSNA Publications). This lecture was also published in the Research Bulletin, Vol.13 #1, 2007.
An artistic element, I might call it a mood of piety toward the human essence, belongs in education, in teaching. This is particularly the case if we direct our gaze at the religious and moral education we want to bestow on the child. And here anthroposophical spiritual science shows us that especially when it comes to the religious and moral element, there is something in the human time-body that is of great significance for the life span on earth of the entire human being. If one can recognize the small child’s mood as that of an essentially imitative being imitating the outer world, and if we can put ourselves in this mood, the only way to characterize it is this—the child is completely open to the outer world; the child gets lost in the outer world. Just as the eye loses itself in the outer world of color, the outer world of light, so too the child loses itself in the outer world. The inner world dawns in the child only gradually. Specific mental representations emerge little by little out of dreams, which still completely live and weave in the outer world.
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Download the article: Anthroposophy and the Riddle of the Soul
The following is an excerpt of a chapter entitled “Anthroposophy and the Riddle of the Soul” from Rudolf Steiner’s previously untranslated book, Education, Teaching, and Practical Life, edited by David Mitchell, AWSNA Publications, available in Spring 2007. This lecture was also published in the Research Bulletin, Vol. 12 #2, 2007.
Human beings confront the riddles of existence only once we have developed a certain level of consciousness about life, when we feel the urge to formulate representations, sentiments, and feelings about their relationship with the world. But once we get there, these riddles truly represent what one might call a vital question, for they are not just the expression of theoretical longings, purely external cultural questions. Indeed, they affect our entire stance in the world, the manner in which we find our way in life, the level of inner security and steadiness with which we go through
life. Everything depends on the solution to these riddles.
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Download the article: On Real Interest in Our Fellow Men
From a lecture by Rudolf Steiner given at Dornach, Switzerland, November 30, 1918
How many human beings there are today who have an abstract and confused conception of life, of their own personal lives! If they ask themselves, for example, “What do I live on?”— for the most part they do not do this, but if they did it once—they would say to themselves, “Why, on my money.”Download the entire article with illustrations: Man's Twelve Senses in Their Relation to Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition
Published in the journal, Anthroposophical Review, Vol. 3, #2, 1981 (UK)
This lecture was given by Rudolf Steiner in Dornach on 8th August. 1920. This is a revised translation by Stephen Briault, and it is published in agreement with the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung.
Today I should like to add depth to what bas been recently discussed by linking it to a previous theme already familiar to some of you. Once, years ago, I described the world of the human senses. You certainly know of the human senses. You certainly know that in speaking of the senses it is customary to reckon the sense of sight, sense of hearing, and the senses of smell, taste and touch. In more recent times, it is true, some scientists have nevertheless been driven to refer to other senses found, as it were, further within man; a sense of halance, for instance, and so forth. But this whole conception of the human senses lacks coherence on the one hand, and above all lacks overall unity. When we have in mind the senses as they are customarily enumerated, we are actually always dealing with only part of man's sense-organisation. We arrive at a comprehensive account of the sense organisation of man only when we take twelve senses into consideration. For today, we wish just to consider these twelve senses, merely enumerating them and describing them briefly.
Read more: Man's Twelve Senses in Their Relation to Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition
Download the article: Rudolf Steiner, A Sketch
Published in the journal, Anthroposophy, 1925 (England)
ON March 30th, 1925, Rudolf Steiner passed peacefully from this earth-life, at the Goetheanum in Dornach. It was here that with a truly amazing endurance and strength he had worked so long and arduously for the realization of his exalted aspirations.
The one great and special task, which claimed all his strength and attention to the very last moment of his earth-life, was the rebuilding of the destroyed Goetheanum, to provide a home for the centre, from which Anthroposophy could radiate into the whole world. The last years of his life were filled with a well-nigh unbelievable activity, with the aim, to spread the new knowledge of the spirit, which he had brought and to inspire every field of human activity with this new guiding light.