In this final volume of his comprehensive biography of Rudolf Steiner, Peter Selg describes Steiner's final months on Earth. Although his health was beginning to decline, 1924 might have been his most productive and fruitful years. It saw a new beginning for the Anthroposophical Society and the beginning of the Esoteric School and the School for Spiritual Science. The year began with the "Christmas Conference," during which the Anthroposophical Society was reborn). That year also witnessed Rudolf Steiner's "Karmic Relationships" lectures, as well as the serialized "Leading Thoughts," summarized Anthroposophy in a series of aphoristic guidelines for meditation, supplemented by essays on the Michaelic nature of Anthroposophy. Also serialized in the Goetheanum newsletter were autobiographical chapters in Rudolf Steiner's life up to 1907. He also defined his important spiritual relationships with Ita Wegman, Marie Steiner, and Lili Kolisko, as well as their significant connection to the Society and his spiritual legacy. New initiatives were also planted in the world during this time, including anthroposophically extended medicine and biodynamic agriculture. From his sickbed in the Goetheanum carpentry shop, Steiner also formed plans and a model for the new Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Also included in this volume is a lecture by Rudolf Steiner on June 4, 1924, "The Festival of Pentecost." Book jacket.

To acknowledge and understand Rudolf Steiner’s unique achievement and life’s work, one must be able to accept that the founder and spiritual researcher of Anthroposophy was “a citizen of two worlds”: the spiritual and the physical. Anthroposophy teaches that this duality, rather than being a quality reserved for special individualities, is inherent to human nature. According to Rudolf Steiner, it is a central aspect of being human, even in times when the suprasensory aspect of humanity is eclipsed (for ordinary day consciousness) and almost eliminated by certain civilizations. The interest in Rudolf Steiner’s person and essence, in his attitude toward life and work, will continue to grow in the decades and centuries that lie ahead, both within and outside the anthroposophical movement. It will take hold of entirely different groups of people, including those who come with spiritual questions or discover them in times of need. Rudolf Steiner’s work grew to be “one unique effort of bringing courage to human beings” (Michael Bauer). This is the first of seven comprehensive volumes on Rudolf Steiner’s “being, intentions, and journey.” It presents Rudolf Steiner from childhood and youth through his doctorate degree and up to the time of his work for the Goethe Archives as editor of Goethe’s scientific writings. By considering his formative years in depth, we come to understand better the roots and development of Rudolf Steiner’s later spiritual research and teachings. This volume is a translation from German of the first three chapters of Rudolf Steiner. 1861 - 1925: Lebens- und Werkgeschichte. Band 1: 1861 - 1914 (Ita Wegman Institut, 2012).

This third volume of Peter Selg’s comprehensive presentation of Rudolf Steiner’s life and work begins with Steiner’s invitation to lecture in the Theosophical Society during the summer of 1900. From the outset of his theosophical involvement, Steiner was resolved to serve and develop the Western path to the spirit, traversed in full, conscious clarity of thought. He was therefore critical of the tendency to avoid the modern standards of a sound knowledge process in matters of spirituality and esotericism, and instead emphasized the importance of idealist philosophy as groundwork for understanding spiritual cognition. (“Whoever speaks of the coldness of the world of ideas can only think ideas, not experience them. Those who live the true life in the world of ideas feel in themselves the being of the world working in warmth that cannot be compared to anything else.” —Rudolf Steiner, Goethe's World View) Although his approach did not always harmonize with theosophical pursuits, Rudolf Steiner recognized the sincere striving at the basis of this movement and agreed to take on increasingly greater responsibility for the German Section. Marie von Sivers, who would later become his wife, was his most supportive colleague during this time. At a decisive juncture, Steiner broke from the Theosophical Society to found the Anthroposophical Society, through which he would continue the development of modern spiritual science more freely in accord with his original intentions. This volume covers the period during which Steiner wrote some of his foundational works: Christianity as Mystical Fact, Theosophy, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and An Outline of Esoteric Science. Peter Selg also describes the building of the first Goetheanum in Dornach as an artistic embodiment of esoteric wisdom, giving rise to an international working community, as well as the performance of the mystery dramas and Rudolf Steiner’s profound Christological lectures known as the Fifth Gospel.

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).

"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 Selg This 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).

"[Children and young people] should know --and really sense and feel --that viruses are not 'evil' but a part of our organism, of our organic 'self,' and that also the group of mutable coronaviruses has been known for many years; we also live with them and deal with them, especially in the upper respiratory tract, although not with SARS-CoV-2, which is a new challenge for the human immune system, though not quite as new as initially assumed." -- Peter Selg Recognizing Reality is a clarion call for broader perspectives in a time of global crisis, for a differentiated understanding of current events, especially Covid, and for a deepening of dialogue, in Martin Buber's sense of the word. In this book, Peter Selg walks the reader through some of the lesser-known, and often ignored, contexts of the global response to Covid. He describes, for example, the role-play simulations and exercises conducted by private institutions (such as The Rockefeller Foundation and the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University) in collaboration with government agencies and corporations in the years leading up to 2020. A large part of such exercises involved the role of the media in public-health messaging, including censorship of dissenting or alternative viewpoints. Having a "cohesive narrative" was seen as vital to establishing the mechanisms of control in "states of emergency" and was used as a justification for restricting fundamental human rights. As Selg demonstrates, much of what has played out over the past two years in response to Covid was actively prepared and rehearsed in such roleplay scenarios. He remarks that the goal of these exercises was not "to avert the danger by changing or correcting the system through new values in ecological, socioeconomic, and political terms --or in terms of a 'peace policy' with regard to the natural environment --but solely in the sense of system-stabilizing crisis management, combined with far-reaching vaccination strategies." Selg also discusses the disastrous consequences of the global lockdown, which are often overlooked or outright suppressed in the mass media in favor of a monolithic narrative that ignores all facts and viewpoints which undermine its "key messages." He points out, for example, that "while...the wealth of the approximately 650 billionaires in the US increased from one trillion dollars to a total of approximately four trillion dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic, countless people worldwide became impoverished on a catastrophic scale, through the loss of all their meager earnings, through the interruption of supply and production chains, through stay-at-home orders that kept them stuck in poor conditions, etc." This book leaves us with the question: Will we say yes to the dehumanizing, technocratic vision of society emerging across the globe, or will we seek a future worthy of the human being? Recognizing Reality was originally published as two volumes in German as Wirklichkeits-verständnis: Jugend-pädagogik in globaler Krisenzeit and as Zivilcourage: Die Herausforderung Freier Waldorfschulen (Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, Arlesheim, Switzerland, 2021).

4 lectures, Dornach, June 28 - July 18, 1923 (CW 350) "Truth and striving for truth must taste good to you; and lies, once you are conscious of them, must taste bitter and poisonous. You must not only know that human judgments have color, but also that printer's ink nowadays is mostly deadly nightshade juice. You must be able to experience this in all honesty and rectitude, and once you can do so, you will be in a state of spiritual transformation" (Rudolf Steiner). What is the relationship between coming to see the secrets of the universe and one's own view of the world? How far must one go before finding the higher worlds on the path of natural science? Do cosmic forces influence all of humanity? What connection do plants have with the human being and the human body? In answering these questions, Steiner covers a wide range of topics, from the development of independent thinking and the ability to think backward to the uses of what seems boring and the reversal of thinking between the physical and spiritual worlds, and from the "physiology" of dreams to living into nature and the spiritual dimension of various foods we eat. As always in his lectures to the workers, Steiner's style is clear, direct, and accessible. This volume is a translation from German of four lectures from Rhythmen im Kosmos und im Menschenwesen: Wie kommt man zum Schauen der geistigen Welt? (GA 350).