The Manifestations of Eleven lectures given in Hamburg, 16th to 28th May 1910 Rudolf The Manifestations of Eleven lectures given in Hamburg, 16th to 28th May 1910 Rudolf Steiner 2nd Second Edition, Third Printing (1969). Not price-clipped. Published by Rudolf Steiner Press, 1936. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is very good with store label on pastedown. Dust jacket is very good with shelf/edgewear. An excellent copy of this vintage philosophic title detailing the concept of karma. Seller 311813 Philosophy & Psychology
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine. Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
A thought-provoking book. Steiner presents a worldview that embraces the idea not only of individual karma but also of group karma, national karma, and historical karma. The book opens the reader's mind to the many influences at work in the shaping of human destiny while maintaining the possibility of human freedom.
A mixed bag of deeply relevant inquiries into the nature of health and illness and some really out there stuff. So par for the course. Bottom line: pain has a purpose, and we more or less choose it; it's just that everyday consciousness doesn't read reality in that way. So initiate yourselves!
Other salient bits: karma is not predestination; if you are a male in this life, you were a female in your previous incarnation; animals are not subject to karmic laws; there is individual and collective karma.
The most "reassuring" bit: we seek the experiences in this life we need to heal, and suffering and illness are wise teachers.
2021 update: I am a really different person than when I last listened to these lectures. "All that exists in physical form is condensed light." The whole human enterprise is to weave love and light. "I'm right on top of that, Rose!"
Definitely hard. This book is as instructive as it weighs. Language is flowery, reaffirming the statement that the German / Austrian education is taken very seriously. A sophisticated reading and extremely constructive.