The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Key Concepts

Just as one speaks of the outer world from the perspective of the natural sciences, so too can one [through spiritual research] speak of the inner world.^{1Basel, May 4, 1920, in GA 334}

If we can recognize ourselves by looking inward, then we can also observe the cosmos, and such observations will provide us with a true cosmology, a cosmosophy.^{2Berlin, April 11, 1922, in GA 171}

I have tried to show that there are other methods and means of learning about the past than those on which natural science must rely, other than the study of the results left behind in the earth. In my accounts of human history in the essays “From the Akashic Records,” drawn from inner, mystical experience, you will find everything that has been taught since time immemorial in the so-called secret schools regarding the origin of humanity and its division into different races.^{3Berlin, November 9, 1905, in GA 54}

Nothing in the cosmos is considered at all without simultaneously including the human being within it. Everything only acquires meaning and, at the same time, a foundation for understanding when it is considered in relation to the human being. Nowhere is the human being excluded. This anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science leads our view of the world back to a consideration of the human being.^{4Stuttgart, February 4, 1921 (afternoon), in GA 334}