How to Know Higher Worlds
GA 10
The chapters comprising this seminal work first appeared as a sixteen-part series of essays in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis from June 1904 to September 1905. Rudolf Steiner had originally planned far fewer installments: at the end of the fourth installment, The Control of Thoughts and Feelings, he wrote “Conclusion to follow.” He then repeated this at the end of the next two essays. Finally, the seventh installment, Conditions of Esoteric Development was intended as the definitive concluding article. This break point resulted in the first seven essays becoming the first English translation appearing in 1908 titled The Way of Initiation. Essays 8-16 were released in a second volume the following year as Initiation and Its Results.
Starting with the second German edition, all sixteen essays were combined into one volume concluding with the statement: “End of the first part.” And although no sequel with the same title, Wie Erlangt Man Erkenntnisse Der Höheren Welten? explicitly designated “Part II” ever appeared, the essays found in The Stages of Higher Knowledge (GA 12) can be regarded as such. This five-part series of essays, which remained incomplete, appeared immediately after the previous sixteen in Lucifer-Gnosis (Nos. 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, October 1905 to May 1908).
The Way of Initiation
Health Research, Mokelumne Hill, California, 70 pp.
1970 reprint of the 1923 translation by Max Gysi
Initiation and Its Results
Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Co., New York, 134 pp., translated from the German by Clifford Bax. 1909
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment
Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1947, 268 pp., translated from the 11th German edition of 1922 by H. Monges
Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten