An Outline of Esoteric Science

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Dumbfoundingly masterful spiritual text - Rated
I think I should add to a former review. This is the classic Steiner spiritual-scientific text on spiritual development and the cosmos. The juxtaposition of spiritual and scientific seems both impossible and forbidding, and 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 and 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 and wonderful, challenging and stimulating, and 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) and secondly because, given its thought architecture, the process of study generates intellectual and 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 else in Steiner's life and work that proves his amazing rigour, practicality and genius. For Steiner, practical life and spiritual development always went hand-in-hand, and 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 and individual adult. He was also a noted artist, sculptor, choreographer, playwright and architect, a social and economic scientist, and developer of a form of advanced organic agriculture known as biodynamics, which is recognised as an important agricultural model in Germany and is much esteemed in 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 and advanced medical system based loosely on homoeopathy but going much further. This is an astonishing record - and I have not covered everything - and visible in 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 and Hegel, and outlined in 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 and the spiritual, putting body, mind and spirit back together.

This astounding book both outlines the practical outcome of this philosophy as a path of spiritual development and the spiritual/scientific results that can be achieved. The book outlines the history of human development in the cosmos and the cycle of a human life from birth to birth, as well as how to cultivate and develop it. This is a path that that exactly explores what conventional science consciously ignores, the qualitative and supersensible.

This book focuses very much on the process of development while giving an understanding of why and how those processes have taken place, giving another spin on the evolutionary model. For those more interested in 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 being in the cosmos and is another possible starting point.

Amazingly important account of the spiritual world - Rated
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 and the relationship to angels, evil and much much more.