Founding a Science of the Spirit: (CW 95)

This is a fantastic set of lectures, especially for anyone new to Steiner. Having read many of his lectures and all the foundational books (still slowly working my way through Philosophy of Freedom), I had yet to find any that I would recommend to someone new to Steiner. The foundational books are often recommended starting points, but these are very dense and formal, and are helped even less by Steiner's terse, 19th century academic writing style. The fourteen lectures here give very accessible, if extremely brief, overviews of some core topics of Esoteric Science (Anthroposophy, Theosophy, Esoteric Christianity, Occult--call it whatever you want). In addition, there are two sets of answers to questions from the audience that provide insight into somewhat more basic questions.As long as I'm ignoring the conventional wisdom that dictates starting with the foundational materials (and I do so with the intention that more folks may take an interest in Steiner if they pique their interest a bit before taking on the likes of Theosophy or Outline of Esoteric Science), I would also recommend The Spiritual Foundation of Morality (translation by Ian Malcolm Gardner) as another brief, relatively easy, but profound set of lectures to those starting out with Steiner. Gardner provides fantastic footnotes that give a thorough but simplified background context.

To comment the the words of another reviewer (" In a way it is a condensed version of Max Heindel's Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception.") This is because Max Heindel relied primarily on the workd of Rudolf Steiner in formulating his Rosicrucian teachings, but without any attribution. This was known even in Steiner's day.