The Foundations of Human Experience


Book Description

Formerly entitled The Study of Man this lecture course, newly translated for this series, contains some of the most remarkable and significant lectures ever given by Rudolf Steiner.




Education for Adolescents


Book Description

8 lectures, Stuttgart, June 12-19, 1921 (CW 302) In these eight talks on education for teenaged 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 into earthly life, aided by spiritual forces, and children's need for an education that cooperates with those forces. Some of Steiner's remarks may be controversial, but unbiased study will lead to an appreciation of the profound thought and wisdom behind what is presented here. German source: Menschenerkenntnis und Unterrichtsgestaltung (GA 302).







Environment and Children


Book Description

How does the built environment affect children - their health, their behaviour, education and development? To support them, what do we need to consider and what do we need to do? Can our surroundings foster environmental and social awareness and responsibility? Based on Christopher Day's experiences designing schools and early childhood centres in the United States and Britain, this groundbreaking book sets out to answer these questions and to offer solutions. Children all too often find themselves living in alien surroundings designed with the needs of adults in mind, cut off not just from the natural environment but also childhood itself. Society's reaction - to cocoon children from the outside world or to resort to drugs to control behaviour - fails to address the fundamental causes of problems which lie in the environment not the children themselves. One of the world's leading thinkers on the impact of buildings on people, Christopher Day's insights offer new light on one of the most important issues for today's society.




Practical Advice to Teachers


Book Description

A seer "sees' more than meets the eye, using the eyes of the soul along with the physical eyes. As all seeing is a form of cognition, higher seeing is the key to higher cognition or knowing. For human beings the spiritual world is hidden deep within the disguise of the world available to the senses and deep within the human psyche, and human consciousness, enmeshed as it usually is in the physical senses, cannot easily be aware of both worlds. The human soul is the link between the physical sense-imbued body and direct experience of the spirit, because it has the latent ability to focus consciousness into any number of levels. The ability to determine the focus of awareness is our great gift and our great challenge. In this practical and accessible guidebook, Dennis Klocek, building on the alchemical tradition and the Western path of initiation developed by Rudolf Steiner, shows how the soul's latent ability can be awakened by conscious acts of will and rhythmical practices. The practices begin wherever we are in our everyday lives and take the seeker through the levels of concentration--the ability to create and hold an inner image; contemplation--the ability to transform the image and make it dynamic; and meditation--the ability to reverse the image, or think it backward into inner silence. After presenting the practical exercises, along with commentary, that identify and lay out the steps, Klocek shows us how the path can be followed through to an understanding of a seemingly impenetrable alchemical image of the soul's journey as he guides us up the Alchemical Mountain to heartfelt thinking. Through such a journey, it becomes possible for human beings to live as spiritual beings among other spiritual beings. For those who are serious about developing faculties of higher knowing and seeing, The Seer's Handbook is a unique, practical, and friendly handbook of exercises, meditations, and insightful commentary that will guide both beginners and more advanced students along the path to higher worlds.