The Way of Initiation (Higher Worlds) - Chapter 1: The Superphysical World and Its Gnosis - Steiner

Chapter 1: The Superphysical World and Its Gnosis

For contemplative listening. This is a human-read recording of the book that is better known by the title How to Know Higher Worlds. Published in 1909, translation by Max Gysi. This book is in the public domain.

The companion volume to this edition (the second half) is Initiation and Its Results and I have a playlist of that book which can be found here:    • Rudolf Steiner Audiobook Initiation and It...  

Subsequent chapters will be uploaded in a playlist as they are recorded, and the entire book will also be uploaded as a single upload shortly.

Rudolf Steiner was born on the 27th of February 1861 in Kraljevec in the former Kingdom of Hungary and now Croatia. He studied at the College of Technology in Vienna and obtained his doctorate at the University of Rostock with a dissertation on Theory of Knowledge which concluded with the sentence: «The most important problem of human thinking is this: to understand the human being as a free personality, whose very foundation is himself"

He exchanged views widely with the personalities involved in cultural life and arts of his time. However, unlike them, he experienced the spiritual realm as the other side of reality. He gained access through exploration of consciousness using the same method as the natural scienctist uses for the visible world in his external research. This widened perspective enabled him to give significant impulses in many areas such as art, pedagogy, curative education, medicine, agriculture, architecture, economy and social sciences, aiming towards the spiritual renewal of civilisation.

He gave his movement the name of „Anthroposophy“ (the knowledge of man) after separating from the German section of the Theosophical Society, where he had acted as a general secretary. He then founded the Anthroposophical Society in 1913 which formed its centre with the construction of the First Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Rudolf Steiner died on 30th March 1925 in Dornach.

His literary work is made up of numerous books, transcripts and approximately 6000 lectures which have for the most part been edited and published in the Complete Works Edition.