Road to Self Knowledge

Rudolf Steiner’s Road to Self Knowledge consists of eight ‘meditations’ or spiritual-guides. The eight topics explored are: The Physical Body, The Etheric Body, Clairvoyant Cognition of the Elemental World, The Guardian of the Threshold, The Astral Body, The Ego Body or Thought Body, The Character of Experience in the Supersensible Worlds and The Way in Which Man Beholds His Repeated Earth Lives.

Rudolf Steiner (25/27 February, 1861 – 30 March, 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he founded a spiritual movement, anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. When he was nine years old, he believed he saw the spirit of an aunt who had died in a far-off town asking him to help her; at the time of the vision neither he, nor his family supposedly knew of the woman's death. In contrast to mainstream Theosophy, he sought to build a Western approach to spirituality based on the philosophical and mystical traditions of European culture. The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Steiner's leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his spiritual science. During this period, he maintained an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and basing his spiritual research and teachings upon the Western esoteric and philosophical tradition. This and other differences, in particular Steiner's vocal rejection of Leadbeater and Besant's claim that Jiddu Krishnamurti was the vehicle of a new Maitreya, or world teacher, led to a formal split in 1912/13, when Steiner and the majority of members of the German section of the Theosophical Society broke off to form a new group, the Anthroposophical Society. Far right-wing groups gained strength in Germany after the First World War. In 1919, a political theorist of the National Socialist movement in Germany, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew. In 1921, Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner on many fronts, including accusations that he was a tool of the Jews, while other nationalist extremists in Germany called for a "war against Steiner". The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led him to give up his residence in Berlin, saying that if those responsible for the attempted coup [Hitler and others] came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to enter the country. From 1923 on, Steiner showed signs of increasing frailness and illness. He nonetheless continued to lecture widely, and even to travel; especially towards the end of this time, he was often giving two, three or even four lectures daily for courses taking place concurrently.