The human being’s life alternates between the great outer macrocosm and the hidden inner microcosm. Steiner discusses the different paths of development that lead to crossing these two thresholds and the transformation of different soul-forces into spiritual organs of perception.

Why do people have such differing events and circumstances to deal with in their lives? What are the meanings of diseases, illness, accidents and natural disasters? Rudolf Steiner speaks of karma as a dynamic and formative reality which must be understood if we are to understand and fruitfully navigate the course of our lives.

Materialism has had an important role to play in the evolution of human consciousness and it has fulfilled its task. Since the 4th century A.D. we have been living in an increasingly spiritual world on a disintegrating, dying earth. However, people have been asleep to this spiritual reality around them. Steiner here points the way out of blind materialism to a new spiritual perception through a conscientious study of spiritual science (Anthroposophy).

Steiner describes how in ancient times people had a natural spiritual vision, and as a consequence were able to perceive and commune with nature spirits. These spirits, also known as ‘elemental beings’, are familiar to us from stories, legends and myths as, for example, fairies and gnomes. He stresses the importance of re-awakening an awareness of these beings and their various activities in natural and soul phenomena.

Occult Science - An Outline by Rudolf Steiner is the most fundamental and comprehensive of his written works on Anthroposophy. Written in 1909 when he was still head of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, it provided for the Theosophists and later the Anthroposophical movement, the broadest framework of occult knowledge that the movement had yet seen. Occult Science is an expansive body of knowledge which documents the evolution of mankind, the kingdoms of nature and the world as viewed from a purely spiritual standpoint - that is as derived from spiritual causative agents.

Previously published as: Occult Science - an Outline, this newly translated edition of Rudolf Steiner's fundamental work provides an inexhaustible source of insight into human and cosmic history, and future destiny.

It also includes detailed methods and exercises for the development of the higher cognitive and perceptual faculties that are necessary for acquiring such knowledge. (See also How to Know Higher Worlds for further information on these and other developmental exercises.)