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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

The Evolution of Consciousness
GA 227

In these comprehensive lectures, given to an English audience, Rudolf Steiner explains how it is possible to develop higher faculties of consciousness — Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. A particularly vivid description is given of one's life after death and the progress of the individual through the planetary spheres where tasks and goals for future incarnations are prepared in cooperation with the spiritual beings of the Hierarchies. The lectures culminate in the call for humanity to gradually take in hand its own destiny through the conscious and free development of spiritual capacities.

Evolution of Consciousness consists of thirteen lectures given at Penmaenmawr, Wales in August of 1923. They were published in German as, Initiations-erkenntnis. Die geistige und physische Welt- und menschheitsentwickelung in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft vom Geistespunkt der Anthroposophie.

I. First Steps towards Imaginative Knowledge August 19, 1923
II. Inspiration and Intuition August 20, 1923
III. Initiation-Knowledge — New and Old August 21, 1923
IV. Dream Life August 22, 1923
V. The Relation of Man to the Three Worlds August 23, 1923
VI. The Ruling of Spirit in Nature August 24, 1923
VII. The Interplay of various Worlds August 25, 1923
VIII. During Sleep and after Death August 26, 1923
IX. Experiences between Death and Rebirth August 27, 1923
X. Man's Life after Death in the Spiritual Cosmos August 27, 1923
XI. Experience of the World's Past August 27, 1923
XII. The Evolution of the World in connection with the Evolution of Man August 27, 1923
XIII. The Entry of Man into the Era of Freedom August 27, 1923