Rudolf Steiner’s profound and practical insights and indications concerning what happens when human beings meet and interact with one another are scarcely known and studied seriously by few. But, despite having been worked with but scantly in the last hundred years, these indications and insights could easily provide the basis for a widescale reawakening of our own, perhaps latent, capacities to listen, speak, and understand one another at a higher level, as beings of soul and spirit.
This volume, edited and compiled by Gary Lamb, provides a succinct yet thorough overview of Steiner’s many remarks and insights into the mysteries of social encounter, as well as offering helpful commentary and contextualization.
Using Steiner’s words, and his own thread of commentary running throughout, Lamb shows how spiritualized conversations and interpersonal dynamics attained through rigorous self-development practices provide the necessary soul-spiritual substance and forces necessary for the overcoming of evil in modern life.
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.
C O N T E N T S:
Background and Context
Editor’s Notes
PART ONE
The Soul Dynamics of Human Encounters in Modern Life
Soul Dynamics within Thinking, Feeling, and Willing during Human Encounters
Listening with the Soul—Being Tolerant and Respectful of Other People’s Opinions
Control of Thinking and Forming Imaginative Pictures
The Creation of Undesirable Elemental Beings through Inappropriate Speech, Soul Attitudes, and Social Arrangements
Spiritualized Human Encounters and Associations
Rituals and Reverse Rituals as Acts of Invocation
Brief Review of Part 1
PART TWO
In Harmony with the Fundamental Social Law and the Threefold Social Organism
PART THREE
Future-Bearing Work: Developing an Objective Understanding of Other People’s Faults and Weaknesses
PART FOUR
The Mission of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha Related to Key Ideas in Parts 1–3
APPENDIX
1: Earth Evolution: Seven Cultural Ages
2: Time Spirits and their Reigns
