The Evolution of Consciousness

Humankind starts in the “Eden” of automatically experienced unity with the divine. For the sake of our high destiny, we experience exile and a descent whose nadir includes the complete dissolution of every instinctively given sense of belonging, including once vital links to family, tribe, race, language, and nation. To climb the ascending path toward the twin goals of freedom and love, and the community thereby possible, we gradually give precedence to identification with our divinely conferred “I” over our instinctive selves. This presentation outlines this journey’s stages of consciousness as described in Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy.