The Essentials of Education, Steiner Rudolf

Three and a half years after the founding of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany, these talks were given to an audience of Swiss school teachers, most having little knowledge of Anthroposophy. This is the context of these lectures, which are among Rudolf Steiner's most accessible talks on education.

A teacher who attended the lectures wrote in the Berne School Paper "Every morning, as we listened anew to Dr. Steiner, we felt we had come closer to him and understood better what he had to say and how he had to say it. Daily, we newcomers gathered, asking ourselves: Why are more of our colleagues not here? It is untrue that anthroposophy limits a person, develops blinkers, or avoids real life.... Step by step, Dr. Steiner shows its application to life...illumining the details and disclosing their connection with profound questions of life and existence. I came to the conference to stimulate my school work. I found benefit in abundance. But also, I unexpectedly received a greater richness for heart and soul--and, from this in turn shall stream richness for my classes."

In other words, these lectures are ideal for anyone who is approaching Waldorf education for the first time. Using language that any teacher or parent can understand, Steiner goes into the essentials of his educational philosophy, providing many examples and anecdotes to convey his meaning. In this way, against the background of the developing child, he allows the curriculum and the method of teaching to emerge as the commonsense conclusion of practical experience.

German source: Die p dagogisch Praxis vom Geichtspunkte geisteswissenschaftlicher Menschenerkenntnis (GA 306).

"This is one of the meanings of the Mystery of Golgotha: the attainment of the unity of humanity from within. Externally, human beings are becoming more and more different. The result will be not sameness but difference over the Earth, and human beings must exert all the more force from within to attain unity" (Rudolf Steiner, lecture 4).

In this collection, Rudolf Steiner describes the evolutionary task facing contemporary humanity in preparing to enter the sixth epoch. In the past, human souls felt a strong connection with the group soul to which they belonged. Today, all "group soul" characteristics--such as race and nation--must be stripped away.

Rudi Lissau wrote of the last lecture: "No anthroposophist should approach racial problems without first pondering this lecture and its implications."

Steiner also explains that we must overcome such preconception as are formed by our normal notions and feelings of good and evil: "Most people picture Ahriman and Lucifer as evil beings--albeit much more intensely evil than human beings. But this is not true; we must keep in mind that certain earthly feelings we associate with our concepts lose their meaning when we go beyond the earthly realm. Thus, we cannot say that there are good gods on the one hand and evil gods Ahriman and Lucifer on the other.... The opposing forces were created by the good gods themselves in an earlier period so that they would be able to bring to bear their full force for the development I have described" (lect. 4).

CONTENTS:

. Individuality and the Group Soul
2. The God Within and the God of Outer Revelation
3. The Lord of the Soul
4. The Universal Human: The Unification of Humanity through the Christ Impulse

In these exciting lectures given in 1922, Rudolf Steiner explores the practical consequences of Christian theological spiritual facts as they unfold in human consciousness. Starting with the early Gnostic understanding of the Christ event from within, Steiner shows how medieval theology reached an exoteric view of the spiritual world. It was this view that, coupled with the rise of abstract intellectuality, led to the separation of faith and knowledge that denied humanity access to suprasensory worlds. Using examples from Dionsyius the Areopagite, John Scotus Eriugena, Paracelsus, and Goethe, Steiner then lays the foundations for a path to the suprasensory that would unite faith and knowledge, through the spirit, in a full trinitarian understanding of the human being and the cosmos.

Part two consists of lectures given in England that deepen our understanding of the Trinity as this may be known through the spirit. The first lecture deals in a remarkable way with practice and stages of meditation. On the basis of such meditation, Steiner shows how we can begin to understand the cosmic origin of the human being and the meaning of The Mystery of Golgotha for humanity and the cosmos. Above all, he stresses, meditation will allow us to realize the foundations of true knowledge: Ex deo nascimur (We are born of God); In Christo morimur (In Christ we die); Per spiritum sanctum reviscimus (Through the Holy Spirit we are reborn).

This work is a translation of lectures 1 to 4 and 8 to 11 of Das Geheimnis der Trinit t: Der Mensch und sein Verh ltnis zur Geisteswelt im Wandel der Zeiten (GA 214).

This supplemental volume presents a real discovery--two recapitulation lessons given in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), on June 12 and 13, 1924. The lessons were discovered only recently in the archive of Eugen and Lili Kolisko. The lessons (first published in German by Perseus Basel in 2016) were written in shorthand and deciphered by Elea Gradenwitz, published here in English for the first time, with the kind permission of Andrew Clunies-Ross, grandson of the Koliskos. Attentive readers will find in these Breslau lessons a discussion of the Guardian of the Threshold not found in any other lessons.

The commentary in this volume by the editor T. H. Meyer sheds light on two striking modifications in the lessons. First is the introduction of Rudolf Steiner's Michael and Rosicrucian signs. Second is the new function assigned to Ita Wegman following Rudolf Steiner's return from England at the end of August 1924. Both actions were motivated by, as Steiner called it, a "betrayal" of the mantras that occurred in London.

CONTENTS:

Preface to the First English Edition by T. H. Meyer
Foreword to the German Edition by T. H. Meyer

The Recapitulation Lessons of the Michael School
First Lesson in Prague
Second Lesson in Prague
Lesson in Berne
First Lesson in Breslau
Second Lesson in Breslau
Notes of the Second Lesson in London
First Recapitulation Lesson in Dornach
Second Recapitulation Lesson in Dornach
Third Recapitulation Lesson in Dornach
Fourth Recapitulation Lesson in Dornach
Fifth Recapitulation Lesson in Dornach
Sixth Recapitulation Lesson in Dornach in Dornach
Seventh Recapitulation Lesson in Dornach

Passages Omitted from the Text
Mantras of the Michael School in English and German
Afterword: The Nineteen Steps of the Meditative Path and Its Expected Continuation
Rudolf Steiner's Blackboard Drawings (in color)

The classes were originally published in German in Esoterische Unterweisungen f r die erste Klasse der Freien Hochschule f r Geisteswissenschaft am Goetheanum 1924 (4 volumes, CW 270).