The Human Being as Body and Soul in relation to the Cosmos: Human Evolution and the Soul and Spirit of the Universe, Part I (The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner)

Thirteen lectures, Stuttgart, Bern & Dornach, June–July 1921 (CW 205)

‘That is the ideal towards which Ahriman is striving: to destroy the individuality of human beings in order, with the power of human thinking, to transform the earth into a web of gigantic thought spiders – but real spiders. That is the ahrimanic goal from which we must escape by really imbuing ourselves with the spirit Word: “Not I, but the Christ in me”.’ – Rudolf Steiner

These majestic lectures speak of the threefold human being – of body (head, heart and hands), soul (thinking, feeling and will), and spirit (waking, dreaming and sleeping). Such holistic concepts challenge the acute dangers of polarisation, of twofoldness – being bound to the earth through dead thought on the one hand (the ahrimanic) and taken up into states of fantasy on the other (the luciferic). The challenge, says Rudolf Steiner, is always to see the intermediary or balancing force, the Christ being, in every context.

Steiner refers to the conclusions of the Ecumenical Council of 869 AD, that human beings consist only of body and soul. Now, he says, we are entering a period where even the soul is denied in favour of the physical brain. In contrast, he presents a vision of evolving humanity in the broader context of a cosmos that reaches to realms of existence beyond even space and time.

This previously-unpublished course of lectures ­– released in tandem with the twin course in CW 206 – features an introduction by William Forward, notes and an index.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was born in the small village of Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Croatia), where he grew up. As a young man, he lived in Weimar and Berlin, where he became a well-published scientific, literary, and philosophical scholar, known especially for his work with Goethe's scientific writings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he began to develop his early philosophical principles into an approach to systematic research into psychological and spiritual phenomena. Formally beginning his spiritual teaching career under the auspices of the Theosophical Society, Steiner came to use the term Anthroposophy (and spiritual science) for his philosophy, spiritual research, and findings. The influence of Steiner's multifaceted genius has led to innovative and holistic approaches in medicine, various therapies, philosophy, religious renewal, Waldorf education, education for special needs, threefold economics, biodynamic agriculture, Goethean science, architecture, and the arts of drama, speech, and eurythmy. In 1924, Rudolf Steiner founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world. He died in Dornach, Switzerland.