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A Consideration from an Anthroposophical Point of ViewThe reflections in this book by Peter Selg and Sergei Prokofieff on the soul-spiritual, ethical, and medical-therapeutic issues surrounding physician-assisted suicide (and suicide as such) will provoke one's thought, feeling, and volition. Its inspiration arises from both Rudolf Steiner and the Hippocratic Oath.Peter Selg begins by showing how Rudolf Steiner views the principle of life as immanent spirit and the living medium of the "I," or individuality and as inviolable and wise beyond our understanding. It is the sacred task of healing always to attend to, honor, and serve life in this sense--to affirm, enhance, and strengthen the life forces of the sick. As Rudolf Steiner puts it, "The will to heal must always function as therapeutically as possible...even when one thinks that the sick person is incurable." These words were spoken before the full consummation of materialist, technologically enhanced medicine, but Rudolf Steiner, as Peter Selg shows, was well aware of the dangers related to the direction of modern medicine.Sergei Prokofieff links the initiatory origins of Hippocratic medicine in the Mysteries with the return of the Mystery origin of medicine and healing in Anthroposophic medicine. Turning to Steiner's spiritual research, he considers suicide to be an "illness" of our time and examines the spiritual consequences of suicide for the after-death experiences of those who have taken their own lives--specifically, that suicide results in the soul's profound disorientation. He goes on to show how suicide makes the after-death experience of Christ infinitely more difficult, as it does the "resurrection of the spirit" and the relation to the spiritual world. Far from being a "free" act, Prokofieff concludes, suicide is quite the opposite.Anyone seeking insight into suicide will find in this book a profound and esoteric introduction to this controversial problem.

"We, the people of the fifth post-Atlantean period...we have to resolve, to the greatest extent possible and in a way that is filled with the power of life, the problem that one can call the problem of evil. I ask you to think about this in some depth. The fact that evil, which will approach the human being of the fifth post-Atlantean period in every possible form and will do this in such a way that the human being will have to resolve the very nature and being of evil scientifically, will have to come to grips, in all his or her loving and hating, with everything that stems from evil, and battle and wrestle with evil's resistance to impulses of the will; all this belongs to the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period." -- Rudolf Steiner, Goethe's Faust in the Light of Anthroposophy, p. 85)The two essays published here were written on the basis of lectures given to members of the School for Spiritual Science. Their content therefore deals directly with the path of inner development outlined in the lessons of the First Class of the School.In the first essay, Selg address the necessary confrontation with the powers of evil as they appear in the Class Lessons and in our time more broadly. Only through confronting and overcoming these powers are we able to find the path to our true humanity.The second essay deals with the figure of the Guardian of the Threshold as a Michaelic teacher and guide along the soul's path into the spiritual world. This figure, Selg argues, is far too little understood in our time. He is a spiritual being of great significance who offers help to all earnest seekers.This book represents an ongoing effort on the part of Peter Selg and the leaders of the General Anthroposophical Section at the Goetheanum to deepen and internalize the work with the Class Lessons for all members of the School for Spiritual Science.This book is comprised of translations of texts originally published in German by Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts: Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Bösen: Zur Schulung der ' Ersten Klasse '. Hochschulvorträge Band 1 (2019); Die Sprache des Hüters: Zur Schulung der ' Ersten Klasse '. Hochschulvorträge Band 2 (2020).

"When thousands are in the initial vanguard of a movement, these thousands have a higher, more potentized obligation...they have the obligation to practice, in every detail, greater courage, greater energy, greater patience, greater tolerance, and above all greater truthfulness in all things." -- Rudolf Steiner (Dornach, June 16, 1923)In light of the centenary of the Christmas Conference 1923/24, Peter Selg has written the four essays published here, which deal, each in its own way, with the past, present, and future of the Anthroposophical Society and its School for Spiritual Science. Selg outlines important historical background to the Christmas Conference, shedding light on the origins of the re-founding of the Society, what necessitated it, and what Rudolf Steiner was hoping to achieve.Though much good work has been done over the past hundred years, many of the issues that hindered the Society and movement in Steiner's time still persist today. This book is intended as a call to self-knowledge for members of the Anthroposophical Society, a call to actively take up the work of "furthering the development of the task-centered worldwide Society that Steiner made so clearly visible in 1923."Rudolf Steiner's words, spoken one hundred years ago, retain their power and urgency today: "Try to grow together with the world! That will be the best, the most significant 'program.' That cannot be put in our statutes--but we should be able to take it as a flame into our hearts."This book is a translation of Die anthroposophische Weltgesellschaft und ihre Hochschule, originally published in German by Verlag am Goetheanum (Dornach, 2023) in collaboration with the General Anthroposophical Section of the School for Spiritual Science.

"The most essential and intrinsic quality of her soul...was not a particular branch of human endeavor, not even art; the most salient of her soul tendencies, her soul intentions, was the striving for spirituality." -- Rudolf SteinerEdith Maryon (1872-1924) was a trained sculptor who worked alongside Rudolf Steiner to create the unique sculpture of Christ ("The Representative of Humanity") at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. One of Steiner's closest collaborators, she was a highly valued colleague and esoteric pupil.As one of his dearest friends, Maryon kept a busy and detailed correspondence with Steiner, in which he confided freely about his personal situation, his lack of true colleagues, difficulties with lecture tours, and the embattled public standing of anthroposophy. Almost invariably, these letters emphasized Steiner's longing for the Dornach studio and their shared work on the Christ statue. Maryon's early death at fifty-two--following fifteen months of illness--shook Steiner to the core. He himself would die less than a year later.With this book, the author's central aim is to illuminate the spiritual signature of Edith Maryon's relationship with Rudolf Steiner and their mutual work in anthroposophy and on the sculpture of Christ. Building on Rex Raab's (1993) biography, Peter Selg's moving study features dozens of photos and facsimiles of letters, utilizing previously unpublished sources from Edith Maryon's and Ita Wegman's literary estates and the Rudolf Steiner Archive in Dornach."In 1915, at the height of summer, with the thundering of cannons audible from nearby Alsace and searchlights scanning the surrounding landscape at night, I sat before the picture of Christ in Dornach.... [Rudolf Steiner] had asked [Edith Maryon] to grant me access to the studio at any time so I could sit silently before the Christ. I made good use of this permission, insofar as I could be sure that I did not disturb the artist. So it was that I experienced the Gospels there in front of the image of Christ." -- Friedrich Rittelmeyer (quoted by Peter Selg in Rudolf Steiner, Life and Work, vol. 4)This volume is a translation from German of Edith Maryon: Rudolf Steiner und die Dornacher Christus-Plastik (Verlag am Goetheanum, 2018).

"History does not repeat, but it does instruct."-- Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny)Since 2009, Peter Selg, along with Polish historians, has led seminars on medical ethics at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial for students at Witten / Herdecke University, Germany. This book was created following a public event in 2019 that investigated the "lessons of Auschwitz" for the practice of medicine in society today and in the future.As well as commemorating the individual victims, the Auschwitz event focused on the role of German physicians in the Nazi regime. In this book, Dr. Selg's discussions go far beyond the historical events of the 1930s and '40s. Countering the legacy of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inhumane medical practices of that time, he presents us with ways to advance forms of medicine today that encourage the most compassionate treatment of one another as human beings."Today, as always in times of crisis, there are symptoms of a return, if not to Nazism, then to a right-wing regime that is strong, with a firm, streamlined order." -- Primo LeviOriginally published in German as Nach Auschwitz. Auseinandersetzungen um die Zukunft der Medizin by Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, Stuttgart, 2020.

"Rudolf Steiner himself did not just comment critically about the out-of-hand 'fear of bacilli' or the "obsession with hygiene" as "modern superstition," but also warned about the dangerous reality of 'pathogens of the worst kind' that could become 'destroyers of human life' and bring with 'dreadful epidemics.'" --Peter SelgThis volume--written by Peter Selg between Easter and Pentecost 2020--gathers a collection of essays on the medical, sociopolitical, and spiritual dimensions of the Covid crisis. He offers these essays as a means of orientation and "explorations" (in Paul Celan's meaning). The author emphasizes in his preface, however, that representatives of Anthroposophy nevertheless have an obligation to speak out on the subject: "If they silence or censor themselves because they do not want to seem in any way negative as a result of their critical reflections, or because even 'before corona' they quickly became the target of various accusations, they lose nothing less than the justification for their existence, their inner identity and credibility, as well as their 'historical conscience'--the crucial meaning of which Rudolf Steiner pointed to time and again and not without reason."This book was originally published in German as Mysterium der Erde. Aufsätze zur Corona-Zeit (Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, Arlesheim, Switzerland, 2020). An earlier English translation of the essay "A Medicalized Society?" (translated by Thomas O'Keefe and Charles Gunn) first appeared in Deepening Anthroposophy, no. 9.1 (that translation has been revised for this volume).

An insightful and informative overview of how, in the time leading up to the founding of The Christian Community nearly one hundred years ago, Rudolf Steiner formulated both the creed itself and its founding principles.

"Their complete understanding of each other and those two great spirits passing into each other created an atmosphere, perceptible to all, that had bearing force and radiated hope for the future." --Marie Steiner-von SiversPeter Selg wrote this remarkable book on the formation of spiritual community and mutual assistance to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of Christian Morgenstern's death on March 31, 1914. Rudolf Steiner was, for Christian Morgenstern, the decisive spiritual teacher and facilitator of the future, both historically and to him as an individual, which is why Morgenstern wished to recommend Steiner for the Nobel Peace Prize. Rudolf Steiner felt great warmth of heart and gratitude toward Christian Morgenstern, his poetic work, and especially his groundbreaking way of working with anthroposophical Spiritual Science. "It is often said that to understand the poet we must go to his home country and understand that Christian Morgenstern is a poet of the spirit. And to understand this poet of the spirit, we must go into the land of spirit, to spirit regions." --Rudolf Steiner

"...we are faced today with the need to turn the Society into a being that is active and effective in the world." --Rudolf Steiner (Nov. 1922)In 2014, the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland launched a series of conferences to deepen the impulse of the 1923 Christmas Conference, the event that Rudolf Steiner referred to as a "festival of consecration" for the "beginning of a turning point of time." The goal of the conferences was to develop a deeper understanding of the Anthroposophical Society's essential task and contribute to shaping its future. This volume presents six talks from the conference in February 2016, the purpose of which was to let the Anthroposophical Society as an archetypal phenomenon speak to us. This society planted a seed of humanity and the model of a legal entity whose future potential and perspectives are yet to be discovered. It is a social organism that exhorts us to put our karma in order, carry what is close to our hearts into the world, and by doing so experience the presence and support of the divine spirit. These edited transcriptions of six lectures--by Peter Selg, Stefano Gasperi, Mario Betti, Johannes Greiner, Gioia Falk, and Marc Desaules--encourage us to move closer to a deeper existential relationship to the Anthroposophical Society and movement, experienced through others and discovered within ourselves.Originally published in German as Die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft. Beiträge zum Verständnis und zum Weiterwirken der Weih-nachtstagung, Band 3 (Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, 2016).

Explores the complex and often misunderstood relationship between The Christian Community and the wider anthroposophical world.

"Originally published in German as Elisabeth Vreede: 1879-1943 (Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, 2009)"--Title page verso

The initial period of childhood is essentially about adapting to and incarnating on Earth and establishing a provisional balance between the "spiritual" and the "physical," between the prenatal cosmic and the earthly factors. During this time, according to Rudolf Steiner, "all the forces of a child's organization emanate from the neurosensory system. . . . By bringing respiration into harmony with neurosensory activity, we draw the spirit-soul element into the child's physical life." Peter Selg investigates how children's early experience of the world begins as an undifferentiated sensory relationship to their phenomenological environment. This aspect of a child's incarnation leads to learning through imitation and to the process of recognizing "the Other" as a separate entity with which to interact. In this cogent work, Peter Selg describes the early stages of childhood from the perspectives of conventional scientific and spiritual-scientific-- anthropological and anthroposophic--research with the purpose of encouraging a new educational attitude in working with young children. In his numerous references to early childhood development, this was Rudolf Steiner's most important and urgent purpose. ∞ ∞ ∞"Steiner directed attention to the special character of the senses in childhood, particularly in the first few years of life. Through their senses, children are fully exposed to (and to some extent at the mercy of) objects and people around them.... In many of his lectures, especially those dealing with education and developmental physiology, Rudolf Steiner emphasized that the anthropology of early childhood must not only recognize the child as a 'comprehensive' or 'universal' sense organ, but must also give that recognition top priority in any consideration of what is involved in the child's life and experiences. 'Children are completely like sense organs in how they take in the contents of their surroundings'" (from chapter 2).

When Rudolf Steiner embarked on the esoteric lessons of the First Class in the newly founded Esoteric School at the Goetheanum, he suggested that the School for Spiritual Science as an esoteric institution had, in the years preceding the Christmas Foundation Meeting of 1923, become estranged from its intrinsic task.This volume closely investigates those matters--to which Steiner referred only briefly--tracing the development of Rudolf Steiner's idea of the School in relation to the Michael community, which he first discussed at length in his lectures on karma, given in parallel to the First Class lessons.This book also describes Ita Wegman's path and her mission in connection with these undertakings.

"Then he gave her the Warmth Meditation and said that she was allowed to give it to all future participants. He wanted to give it to Dr. Wegman himself. It is a chain-meditation, not a circle-meditation. Then he described it as the way for medical practitioners to behold the etheric Christ." --Madeleine van DeventerRudolf Steiner wrote the text of the "Warmth Meditation" on two sheets of A4 paper in neat handwriting and without revisions or corrections, complete with two small, sketch-like drawings. He gave the meditation to the medical student Helene von Grunelius in early 1923 and "described it as the way for medical practitioners to behold the etheric Christ." It was intended for use by her and her circle of friends in their medical studies. The warmth meditation became their central esoteric medical meditation and has been maintained and practiced by countless individuals during the past eight decades, becoming for many the existential core of their therapeutic practice and perspective. Peter Selg's insightful book describes the historical context of meditation and some of its spiritual implications. Included are reproductions of the original meditation as written down by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman."You detect at this point what life, which has poured into the world, actually is. Where can the source of this life be found? It can be found in what stirs the moral ideals and prompts us to say that if we allow ourselves to be filled by the light of moral ideals today, they will bear life, matter, and light and create worlds. We carry that world-creating element, and the moral ideal is the source of all that creates worlds."--Rudolf Steiner

On 1 June 1914, Rudolf Steiner spoke in Basel for the last time before the outbreak of World War I, and for the last time ever in all his lectures and writings about the Nathan soul and its relationship with the Mystery of Golgotha. This internal lecture, given only for members of the Anthroposophical Society, concluded a series of profound Christological reflections begun on September 20, 1913, at the laying of the foundation stone for the St. John's building (the first Goetheanum) in nearby Dornach and culminating (four weeks before the Sarajevo assassination that sparked the Great War) in the motif of "selflessness," whose importance for the future Steiner stressed with great and unmistakable emphasis. This study by Peter Selg-appearing on the centennial of the beginning of that war-focuses on the development of key motifs in Steiner's lectures in the immediate prewar period: the "Fifth Gospel," the Nathan soul, and Christ's act of sacrifice. Also contained here is the entire text of Rudolf Steiner's lecture in Basel on June 1, 1914, whose important words of introduction have appeared only once before, in the Goetheanum newsletter in 1936. This book was originally published in German as Die Leiden der nathanischen Seele: Anthroposophische Christologie am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkriegs (Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, Arlesheim, Switzerland, 2014).

The first chapter of this volume looks at Rudolf Steiner's years in Weimar, beginning with his work at the Goethe Archives editing Goethe's scientific works. It was in this capacity that Steiner was able to comprehend the great spiritual depth of Goethe's life and work, which became the foundation for his own lifework. This chapter also looks at his social circles and the writing and publication of his works Truth and Knowledge (CW 3) and The Philosophy of Freedom (CW 4). It also highlights his encounter with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, his visits to the Nietzsche Archives in Naumburg, and the writing of his book Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom (CW 5). Rudolf Steiner's time in Weimar comes to a close with the creation of his second book on Goethe: Goethe's World View (CW 6), a fruit of his work at the Archives. The second chapter focuses on Rudolf Steiner's time in Berlin, where he worked as editor of a cultural periodical, Magazin für Litteratur, and accepted a position as lecturer at the Workers' School. There he was able to grow into his capacity as a teacher and where, although he encountered many ideological challenges, his insight into historical development found wide appreciation among students. The third chapter covers the turn of the century and Rudolf Steiner's inner transition to speaking and writing more openly of his esoteric observations on the evolution of consciousness, the "I," and the training of cognition. His decisive 1899 essay, Individualism in Philosophy, marked this impulse, followed by invitations to lecture freely before the Theosophical Society, where Rudolf Steiner presented the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale and the content of what later became his own books Mystics after Modernism (CW 7) and Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity (CW 8).

From 1933 to 1935, Ita Wegman was confronted by both Nazi fascism and internal crises in the General Anthroposophical Society. During those years, she traveled to Palestine in the fall of 1934 following a grave illness that nearly ended with her death. Her correspondence during this period, as well as her notes on the trip, reveal the great biographical importance to her of these travels and indeed the whole scope of her spiritual experiences in 1934. Ita Wegman had unambiguous perspectives and a uniquely clear view of both the political threat and her social-spiritual task during this period. There was, however, a radical change in her inner stance toward the opposition, aggression, and defamation she encountered within anthroposophic contexts in reaction to her intense, purely motivated efforts. She tried to live and work in true accord with her inner impulses and, ultimately, with Rudolf Steiner's legacy, especially within the anthroposophic movement. Doing so, she increasingly found her way to her own distinctive and uncompromising path. The author reveals the general nature of those three years-a period whose distinctive spiritual and Christological task and dramatic dangers Rudolf Steiner had foreseen in 1923: "If these men [the Nazis] gain government power, I will no longer be able to set foot on German soil." Ita Wegman's efforts in 1933 to confront the dark powers of National Socialism and the convulsions in Dornach, which she experienced firsthand, as well as her subsequent illness and the clarity of her "Christological conversion" in 1934 to '35, reveal a very specific, intrinsically comprehensible and forward-looking quality whose spiritual signature is clearly prefigured in Rudolf Steiner's spiritual-scientific predictions. In this book, Peter Selg focuses exclusively on Ita Wegman, her development, and her words, simply presenting the processes she went through and, implicitly, their extraordinary spiritual nature, without any attempt at interpretation. This focus arises from the governing premise that the mysteries of a great life such as that of Ita Wegman reveal themselves in the details. Tracing the subtle steps in her life allow us deeper insight into Ita Wegman's being. She herself wrote, "In general meetings or gatherings, people always understood me poorly because I lacked a smooth way of expressing myself. But people of goodwill always understood what I meant." This book was originally published in German as Geistiger Widerstand und Überwindung. Ita Wegman 1933-1935 by Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 2005.

The first time all of Steiner's comments on the Lord's Prayer have been presented together.

"Originally published in German by Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts 2011 as Ich bin anders als du. Vom Selbst- und Welterleben des Kindes in der Mitte der Kindheit"--T.p. verso.

"Originally published in German as: Grundstein zur Zukunft. Vom Schicksal der Michael-Gemeinschaft"--Title page verso.

In a lecture eight weeks before the outbreak of World War I, Rudolf Steiner, conscious of developments to come, coined the phrase "culture of selflessness" to describe the culture that would develop in the future. The far-reaching social implications of his primarily Christological lectures on the Fifth Gospel, given in 1913/14 under the same political circumstances, were foreign to many of Steiners contemporary audiences, who largely failed to understand his dramatic accounts drawn from the Fifth Gospel (or that gospel itself) as a "source of comfort" for the future, or (as Rudolf Steiner said of them) as "needed" for future work.

Maria Krehbiel-Darmstdter (18921943), who was killed at Auschwitz, was a highly gifted pupil of Rudolf Steiner and a member of The Christian Community. Born into a Jewish family in Mannheim, she was deported to Gurs camp in the Pyrnes on October 22, 1940, where she survived harsh conditions and helped many of her fellow inmates. Following temporary sick-leave (under police supervision) in Limonest near Lyon, and a failed attempt to flee to Switzerland, she was brought to Drancy transit camp near Paris before being taken to Auschwitz. This book offers unique testimony of an individual rooted in esoteric Christianity and Spiritual Science who found sources of inner resistance during one of historys darkest periods. As the portrait of a highly ethical and sorely tried woman amid catastrophic conditions, it describes her existential efforts to summon powers of concentration, meditation, and dedication to others, showing how these continued to inform her outlook and actions to the very end. Polish Jews in Drancy referred to Maria Krehbiel-Darmstdter as Mre Maria. They experienced her distinctive spirituality and personal qualities and a profound religiosity that retained an inner connection with the Christian sacramental world, even in the most desolate circumstances.