Rudolf Steiner's Exercises For Spiritual Development
Rudolf Steiner developed exercises aimed at cultivating new cognitive faculties he believed would be appropriate to contemporary individual and cultural development. According to Steiner's view of history, in earlier periods people were capable of direct spiritual perceptions, or clairvoyance, but not yet of rational thought; more recently, rationality has been developed at the cost of spiritual perception, leading to the alienation characteristic of modernity. Steiner proposed that humanity now has the task of synthesizing the rational and contemplative/spiritual components of cognition, whereby spiritual perception would be awakened through intensifying thinking.
A central principle of Steiner's proposed path to spiritual development is that self-development - inner transformation - is a necessary part of the spiritual path: "for every step in spiritual perception, three steps are to be taken in moral development." According to the spiritual philosophy Steiner founded, anthroposophy, moral development:
- reveals the extent to which a person has achieved control over his or her inner life;
- ensures that he or she lives in harmony with the surrounding natural and social world;
- correlates with his or her progress in spiritual development, the fruits of which are given in spiritual perception; and
- guarantees the capacity to distinguish between true perceptions and illusions, or to distinguish in any perception between the influence of subjective elements and objective realities.
Read more about Rudolf Steiner's Exercises For Spiritual Development: Meditative Path, Preliminary Requirements For Embarking On A Spiritual Training, Supplementary Exercises, Individual Exercises, See Also
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