"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 is only to an extent-identical with our past, with our life experiences. My youth, your youth: they are not identical with the adolescent constitution and life reality toward which we currently have to direct our educational efforts. Yet educate we must, and educating means preparing for a future." -Peter Selg (from the book) Schools reflect the state of society. If society is materialistic, competitive, egoistic, technological, and without concern for human values and long-term thinking, our schools will tend to reflect those values. However, what if education were about something else? What if education were about the future? What if education were a about nurturing a new generation of human beings, integrated in body, soul, and spirit and able to think for themselves and have the capacity to love? Perhaps the world would change. The Waldorf school, initiated and guided in 1919 by Rudolf Steiner, was conceived with precisely such an end in view. In this passionate, inspiring, and moving book, Peter Selg, speaks from a deep knowledge of Anthroposophy and from his extensive experience as a child psychiatrist. He returns to the original impulses behind the first Waldorf school to show their continuing validity and how they still respond to what we need. From this view, Waldorf education is future-oriented, based on a holistic worldview and cosmology that is humanistic, scientific, and spiritual, and develops through a curriculum and a teacher-student relationship based on love. Its focus is the miracle of the developing human being. Recognizing the equal importance of thinking, feeling, and willing, Waldorf education works through bodily movement and art, as well as through intellect and mind. Waldorf Education is not a theory but a living reality, and Selg brings this reality to life before us through the biography of the first Waldorf school. Thus, we learn to see it in a new way-in its essence, as a healing model of what education might become if the primary relationship, the inner core of a school, is the free relationship between teacher and student. As Steiner wrote: "It is our task as teachers and educators to stand in awe of the individuality of the student and offer our help so that it can follow the laws of its own development. We are merely called upon to remove any obstacles in body or soul that might hinder the individuality from realizing its potential freely." A verse given at the dedication of a building at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart expresses the essence of Waldorf Education in poetic form: May there reign here spirit-strength in love; May there work here spirit-light in goodness; Born from certainty of heart, And from steadfastness of soul, So that we may bring to young human beings Bodily strength for work, inwardness of soul, and clarity of spirit.

The review exercises bring the experiences of our daily lives to full awareness. By directing our attentive gaze to what has happened - whether in a single day or in whole phases of life - we kindle light in our will. Undertaking such a review backwards, in reverse sequence, or from an 'external perspective', requires a huge inner effort as we establish distance between ourselves and our daily experiences. In this essential handbook the editor has drawn together virtually all Rudolf Steiner's statements on the review exercises, supporting them with commentary and notes. Described from different perspectives and approaches, there are a surprising range of suggestions for carrying them out. Individual chapters focus on reviewing the day (transforming the power of memory); reviewing events in your life (awakening the higher self); reviewing the other's perspective (awakening social impulses); exercises in thinking backwards (illuminating the will); and more.

This is a new release of the original 1925 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1925 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Modern science can speak with authority regarding only a tiniest fraction of the earth's interior. We have, quite literally, scratched just the surface of our planet. Can we truly know what lies beneath our feet, in the unimaginably deep depths of the earth? Can the phenomenon of spiritual investigation add to this question? In this comprehensive volume, with notes and an introduction, Rudolf Steiner's utterances on this theme have been brought together for the first time under one cover. His unique overview gives a picture of the nine layers of the earth as they become visible via the research of the spiritual scientist. The layers range from the familiar 'mineral' on which we live, to the innermost core which Steiner connects to human and animal powers of reproduction. In between are layers such as the 'Mirror Earth', which represents qualities of extreme evil, and the 'Fire Earth', which is connected to natural catastrophes. The information Steiner conveys is never abstract or theoretical, but intimately related to the human being. The Fire Earth, for example, is acutely affected by people's will. When the human will is chaotic and untutored, says Steiner, it acts magnetically on this layer and disrupts it, leading to volcanic eruptions. He also describes other natural catastrophes - such as extreme weather and earthquakes - in connection to the interior of the earth and karma.

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 offshoots of Anthroposophy are well known, eighty-five years after his death and eighty-seven years after the re-formation of the Anthroposophical Society, what Rudolf Steiner brought into the world, what entered the world through him and what he sought to accomplish-that is, what spiritual science and spiritual-scientific research are and how one practices them-remain virtually unknown. In other words, something essential has been forgotten. Written both in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's birth and in the context of the long-standing, episodically erupting, and ongoing confusion surrounding the mission and task of the Anthroposophical Society, Peter Selg seeks to recover what has perhaps been forgotten or overlooked in Rudolf Steiner's own words and life. He does so by describing, clearly and objectively, the historical background of Steiner's vision of the "civilizational task" of Anthroposophy and how he had hoped it might be accomplished. This book has two parts. First, the author offers a lucid description of the development and gradual sharpening-in the face of the crisis of Western culture epitomized by World War I and its aftermath-of the vision of spiritual science as a truly Michaelic task for the Michael Age. In part two, Peter Selg takes up the events following Rudolf Steiner's death, outlining deftly and subtly the struggles and developments that ensued, commenting tactfully on the questions and perspectives that arose and continue to arise. Rudolf Steiner's Intentions for the Anthroposophical Society is a book for all those who care about the reality and future of Anthroposophy.