Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart: The Fundamental Spiritual Exercises of Rudolf Steiner

“We can find an authentic modern way of working on the chakras in the exercises created by Rudolf Steiner, who, on the basis of a new kind of thinking process, recast certain yoga exercises in a form consistent with the modern and even future stages of (spiritual) development. In this way he fulfilled a small and little known branch of yoga meditative practice, the Gayatri-Sadhana, the goal of which was prophetic, for it was focused on the reversed Kundalini (awakening the energy of all seven chakras from top down instead of the usual upward method) in a way that had become possible only at this much later historical time.” (from the preface)Whereas meditation is the foundation of any spiritual path of development, the seer and teacher Rudolf Steiner advised that specific “accompanying,” or “fundamental,” spiritual exercises should always be practiced in conjunction with it in order to protect the individual from dangers posed to normal consciousness by meditation practice.These exercises offer such protection by helping to develop inner certainty and strength. This is achieved, for example, through the first exercise by concentrating and intensifying the powers of thinking, through the second by developing control of one’s volition, through the third by mastering the outer expressions of the feeling life, and so on.Florin Lowndes describes the fundamental exercises in thorough detail, giving suggestions as to how they can be practiced. He also relates an important and hidden aspect―that the exercises embody a means for developing and strengthening organic and “living” thinking, which is intimately related to enlivening a new organ of perception―the heart chakra, or “lotus.”In this popular guidebook, Lowndes sheds new light on many aspects of this subject and offers encouragement and stimulus to those looking for a modern path of spiritual development. Read more