Evolution in the Aspect of Realities

PREFACE

As an introduction to these six lectures, we quote the following statement from Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth's book, The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner, (pg. 167, Spiritual Science Library, Blauvelt NY):

“In the winter season of 1911, The Berlin public lectures, given partly in the Architektenhaus partly in the Philharmonic Building, began on October 19, with the theme Man in Relation to the Supersensible Worlds. A lecture followed on Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science. Simultaneously there began a cycle of lectures for members on Evolution from the Point of View of the True, in which a description of the primordial beginnings of the cosmic evolution could now be ventured upon, not only in regard to substances and forces, but also as regards spiritual essence. Rudolf Steiner presented in magnificent pictures, astonishingly concrete, the primordial beginnings of the cosmic evolution, so difficult to be conceived by our present-day consciousness. What is presented by the natural science of the present time as a vague theory of the nebular origin of the universe; what is described by John the Evangelist from a religious standpoint as the deed of the Logos, — this was presented here out of spiritual-scientific research as content of knowledge, as a work of art of Creative Powers, and as substance of religious experience, capable of being grasped by human consciousness in its harmonious synthesis.”

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This book was originally published in England about 1928 or 1929 (no date, no publisher listed in this early edition). Since that date, other translations of these lectures have appeared under different book titles. The best known title has been The Inner Realities of Evolution (Cycle No. 35).

We have decided to reprint it in its original book format for several reasons. Historically, it should be helpful to all those readers and collectors of rare book editions. Some of these books or lectures are either out of print, or copies are very difficult to find, and so these reprints will be most useful in making as much of Dr. Steiner's Spiritual Science Research available at all times and to a wider audience. To help spread the knowledge contained in these books to the general public, through as many different editions, sources and outlets as possible is one of the primary objectives of the Foundation and its Institute, and that is why we are supporting this effort.

We are most thankful to those early pioneers, who produced these editions which have been so valuable to many of us in America when first we contacted Dr. Steiner's Spiritual Science. And it is with sincere appreciation of their courage and effort that we present these volumes to a wider audience in keeping with their original objective.

January 1989

Steiner Institute for Spiritual Research
(a project of the Foundation for Advancement of
Arts and Letters, in memory of Rudolf Steiner)