Rudolf Steiner's fundamental handbook for spiritual and personal development continues to grow more "modern" each day. His methods nevertheless remain clearly distinguishable from the many others that are generally available today. First, Steiner's path of spiritual growth is based on the clarity of thought normally associated with scientific research. Rather than denying clear thinking, his aim is to extend it beyond its present limitations. Second, Steiner recognizes-as all genuine disciplines always have-that the path to spiritual experience is arduous and dangerous, calling for tremendous self-control in thinking, speech, and action. The human being is a unity, and we cannot develop real knowledge without a corresponding development of feeling and volition.
As the twentieth century progressed Steiner foretold that humanity would begin to experience a longing for forms of experience that transcended intellectual and materialistic thinking. A hundred years after its initial publication in 1904, there are countless ways to achieve such experience-Eastern forms of meditation, channeling, remote viewing, and astral projection, to mention a few. There has also been huge increase in people reporting various kinds of suprasensory perceptions, such as near-death experiences and encounters with angelic beings.
In this context, Steiner's key spiritual workbook-reproduced here in the classic Osmond-Davy translation-is needed more than ever, given its unique, precise instructions for inner training, its protective exercises, and its indications for grounding and centering. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds begins with the conditions required for personal development, and guides us through the stages of initiation, its practical aspects, and its effects.
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.
