In 1919 Rudolf Steiner spoke about the future physical incarnation of the being of Ahriman. This would take place before 'a part' of the third millennium had passed, and was inevitable – but it was also necessary that people were aware of this event and recognized it, for earthly culture would be destroyed if the world were to fall completely to Ahriman. The situation we find ourselves in today shows Ahriman's unmistakable signature: the rapid destruction of nature, zoonotic diseases and p...

"He listened extremely attentively, apparently not looking at me at all, but totally devoted to my words." --Franz Kafka"The only love that you can show me is to call me anytime, day or night, when you need me." --Rudolf Steiner (to Friedrich Rittelmeyer)For Peter Selg, if Anthroposophy to be a living reality, we must learn to know and love Rudolf Steiner as he appeared to those who knew and loved him: namely, as ...

"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, ea...

"Every moral deed and every physical action in human life is connected in the human heart. Only when we truly learn to understand the configuration of he human heart will we find the true fusion of these two parallel and independent phenomena: moral events and physical events." --Rudolf SteinerToday we know very little about the true nature of the human heart. Our knowledge arises only from a materialistic or an emotional standpoint. Howe...

"A tumultuous situation arises in the relationship between the adolescent...and the world. This tumultuous situation is necessary, and as teachers, we need to have it in mind during the years leading up to it. Overly sensitive teachers might get the idea that it would be better to spare young people this upheaval. However, in so doing, they would make themselves the worst enemy of youth."--Rudolf SteinerAdolescence is the period during wh...

Although the fruits of Anthroposophy--Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, Camphill, anthroposophic medicine, and so on--are relatively well known and moderately successful, their relationship to Anthroposophy and its vehicle for transmission, the General Anthroposophical Society, and the School for Spiritual Science, remains mysterious and unclear; sadly, the same is true of the meaning and purpose of those institutions.Related to this is the fact that, though these offshoot...

"It is this we have to learn in our times: to live with pure trust, without any existential certainty, trusting in the ever-present help of the world of spirit. Truly, there is no other way." -- Rudolf SteinerMaria Krehbiel-Darmstädter (1892-1943), who was murdered 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 P...

"It is a simple but essential principle: education aims at the future, at a time that we as educators do not yet know and cannot foresee. The challenges that will confront the children in the future are not those of the past--of our past, of our life story and our horizon. Times change, so do the realities of life, and in our times they change quickly and dramatically. Education aims at the future and that puts us as educators in a difficult situation: this future is not--or i...

"Not only do we pass through the gate of death as immortal beings, we also enter through the gate of birth as unborn beings. We need the term unbornness, as well as the term immortality, to encompass the whole human being" (Rudolf Steiner).As anyone who has had a child knows, newborns enter the earthly world as beings different from their parents. They arrive with their own individuality, being, and history. From the beginning, they manifest an essential dignity a...

"We are separated from the spiritual worlds only by states of consciousness, not by spatial circumstances. States of consciousness are what separate us." --Rudolf SteinerRudolf Steiner saw relationships with the dead as the "religious attitude of the future" in the highest sense. Becoming comfortable with thinking and speaking of the dead as concretely as we speak of the living will profoundly affect human activity. To Steiner, the "enliv...

Rudolf Steiner's extraordinary ability to perceive the inner nature and development of children provided insights at many levels and areas of the creative learning process. He spoke of this ability as a precondition for all forms of healthy childhood education--including special education--and suggested that teachers should develop such a capacity within themselves.This process involves the recreation of the child within oneself, based on what we are able to observe in the child's ...

Ita Wegman is not only an inspiring genius of Anthroposophy, but she is also a healing genius of anthroposophic medicine. Perseverance, courage, greatness mark her being (Emanuel Zeylmans van Emmichoven).With great empathy, delicacy, and directness, Peter Selg recounts, in three lectures, the moving story of Ita Wegman and her relationship with Rudolf Steiner in the context of the development of anthroposophic medicine and the formation of the Medical Sec...