In 1919 Rudolf Steiner founded the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany. As a preparation for the teachers, he delivered a series of lectures that were gathered together in a book, Study of Man. The lectures are about education in a fundamental rather than immediate sense; with cosmic sweep and deep spiritual intent, they address the psychology of man. The teacher's understanding of herself and the child, after all, is the only possible foundation for a worthy education.

What is offered here is a modest attempt to support the meditative reading of Study of Man. True knowledge of the human psyche, or spirit, is always experiential; it is necessarily self-knowledge. Meditation and artistic exercises, connected as they are to deep inner feeling, can help us gain such knowledge. Meditative reading is a stringent discipline through which our thoughts can become images (symbols or archetypes) carrying much more movement and life than our normal, more abstract thoughts. Such thoughts can approach reality.

Notes on Lecture 1, by Vladislav Rozentuller --->

Notes on Lecture 2, by Vladislav Rozentuller --->