"Translation of Geiste und soziale Wandlungen in der Menschheitsentwickelung, published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland, 1992"--T.p. verso.

Biodynamic agriculture, which has consistently increased in popularity over the years, was born from a single course of eight lectures delivered by Rudolf Steiner in Koberwitz (now in Poland) in June 1924. In The Agriculture Course Peter Selg presents an unprecedented study of the context within which the lectures took place, conveying a tangible sense of the celebratory mood and atmosphere of those Whitsun events. He highlights Steiner's intentions for the course - as well as the parallel lectures he gave in Breslau - by drawing widely on the available literature and numerous archive materials. Recognizing that chemical manipulation of agriculture was neither desirable nor sustainable, Rudolf Steiner helped launch an agricultural movement with a truly pioneering outlook. As Selg describes, Steiner saw that '...what was needed instead was new, conscious insight into life forces and laws, into the nature of organisms, into the diverse realms of nature, and the determining factors of both earth and cosmos that influence them.' The vivid picture painted here reveals the importance Rudolf Steiner placed on launching this work, and the extent to which his initiative offered an answer to the emerging forces of cultural and political destruction that would lead to the Second World War.

In a remarkable deed of original scholarly research and detailed detective work, Anne Weise recreates sketches of a lost life - of one of the millions of forgotten souls whose lives came to a violent end in the Holocaust. Her focus is Alfred Bergel (1902-1944), an artist and teacher from Vienna who was a close associate of Karl Koenig - the founder of the Camphill Movement for people with special needs - who wrote of Bergel in his youthful diaries as his best friend 'Fredi'. After the annexation of Austria, Alfred Bergel found himself unable to escape the horror of the National Socialist regime. Subsequently, in 1942 he was deported to the Theresienstadt camp. Imprisoned there, he produced numerous artistic works of the inmates of the ghetto and taught drawing, art history and art appreciation - sometimes in collaboration with the Bauhaus artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. During this period, he was also forced by the Nazis to produce forgeries of classic art works. One of the central figures of cultural life in the Theresienstadt ghetto, Bergel was eventually transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 where, tragically, he was murdered. His name and his work are largely forgotten today, even amongst Holocaust researchers, but Weise succeeds in honouring the life of the Jewish artist by lovingly piecing together his biography, based on numerous personal testimonies by friends and contemporaries and supplemented with documents and many dozens of photos and colour reproductions of Bergel's artistic works. This invaluable recreation of a life provides insight not only into the desperate plight of a single individual, but also illustrates the human will and determination to survive in the context of one of the darkest periods of recent history.

The Gospel of John, distinct from the 'synoptic gospels', is the most esoteric and challenging account of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. John, whose identity has been much debated, mysteriously refers to himself as 'the disciple whom Jesus loved'. But didn't Jesus love each of the twelve Apostles? Indeed, did he not love all human beings? However, the Gospel says only of Lazarus that Jesus 'loved him'. In this profound study, Richard Seddon brings together essential but often overlooked quotations from the work of the philosopher and scientist Rudolf Steiner. Steiner made no claim to divine inspiration, but described how - through the vigorous discipline of inner development - the capacity for spiritual-scientific research could be acquired. Rudolf Steiner, who founded anthroposophy, undertook research into many of the incidents recorded in John's Gospel, and reported his results in lectures given across Europe. In compiling Steiner's various statements, The Challenge of Lazarus-John reveals that John's Gospel not only gives a historical account, but also represents a path of personal development or initiation.After the prelude characterizing Creation, the Gospel describes how the Christ being descended into the physical and spiritual constitution of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism. Crossing the threshold between physical and spiritual worlds, the Gospel writer places emphasis on the development of the higher self in freedom, on the rebirth of the soul, and on the raising of Lazarus. An interlude considers the significance of the seven events referred to as 'signs', and the seven 'I am' statements in relation to higher stages of cognition. The remainder of the Gospel is seen as an expression of the seven stages of Rosicrucian-Christian initiation and their reformulation in the process of human evolution described in anthroposophy. This culminates in an examination of the spiritual processes that take place in the constitution of Jesus during the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It is Lazarus-John's personal witness of these events that enables him to write his unique Gospel.Drawing together such insights and interpretations, Seddon has produced a comprehensive monograph that supplements existing biblical commentaries and illumines John's enigmatic Gospel as a truly Christian path of modern initiation - a challenge to all human beings that will remain for millennia to come.

What can we read in the fast-moving events of recent times? Is there a theme - a spiritual signature - that should be recognized and understood? Following on from the book of essays Perspectives and Initiatives in the Times of Coronavirus, key figures from the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum assess critical societal issues in a series of striking lectures. In the context of the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, the speakers address questions such as: 'Are we making a religion out of science?', 'How is our behaviour mirrored in the ecosystem?' and 'What effects do inner work and meditation have on the healing powers of the human being?' Offering scientific, artistic, historic and sociological viewpoints, their research is based on expert knowledge and practice in various disciplines such as medicine, agriculture and education. Uppermost in their analysis, however, is the spiritual dimension of the human being. The book also deals with misrepresentations and misinterpretations of anthroposophy. The School of Spiritual Science, with its centre in Dornach, Switzerland, has eleven sections that are active internationally in research, development, teaching and practical implementation of findings. The work of each of the School's sections seeks to develop anthroposophy - as founded by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) - in a contemporary context through the core disciplines of general anthroposophy, medicine, agriculture, pedagogy, natural science, mathematics and astronomy, literary and visual arts and humanities, performing arts and youth work.

'That in our times a kind of supernumerary person is appearing who is egoless, who in reality is not a human being, is a terrible truth.' - Rudolf Steiner -- Are there people on earth today who do not have a self - a human ego or 'I'? The phenomenon of 'egolessness' - the absence of a human being's core - was discussed by the spiritual teacher Rudolf Steiner in lectures and personal conversations. An egoless individual, he intimated, is an empty sheath through which other spiritual entities could operate. Erdmuth J. Grosse brings together many little-known quotations from Rudolf Steiner's spiritual research and supports them with a wealth of disquieting reports, testimonies and examples from literature and politics. He places these insights within the broader context of the riddle of the human self, throwing light on the spiritual development of the individual and humanity as a whole. In this thought-provoking study, Grosse goes on to discuss the role of comets, the effects of cyanide on the human constitution - especially in the light of the Holocaust - and the hidden effects of ceremonial magic, occult lodges, cults and sects. In conclusion, he offers positive solutions to humanity's present predicament by describing the healing impulses of social threefolding, the invisible spiritual beings seeking to help humanity, the role of the gods, the Christ impulse and the true goals of human evolution.

'We learn gradually to raise our eyes not only to material existence; instead we discover spiritual entities and their actions wherever we look in the universe...We get to know the deeds of these spirits. We are alive and active and we are within the spiritual entities and their activities.' - Rudolf Steiner This classic series of lectures presents systematic knowledge on many different spiritual entities, ranging from the higher hierarchies of angels down to hindering demons. Basing his presentation on spiritual-scientific research, Rudolf Steiner intends to awaken us to the existence of these beings and how they interact with all aspects of our lives. Steiner describes how animals, plants and minerals have group souls - with even an inert stone having a spiritual counterpart in the invisible world. The various planets in the cosmos are connected to great spiritual beings and hierarchies too, as is the zodiac, which is not a static band of fixed stars but is also evolving. Steiner gives a remarkable picture of how Christ relates to the zodiacal constellations and to our own higher aspects. Spiritual entities are associated with the evolution of earth and the previous stages of its existence - and here Steiner elaborates relevant chapters of his book Occult Science, An Outline, explaining how our task on earth is ultimately to develop love rather than wisdom (which was the goal of earth's previous stage). From cosmic considerations, Steiner leads to the spirits of the kingdoms of nature - the elemental beings, with their four classes connecting to the four elements - gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, or earth, water, air and fire spirits. He describes how elemental beings are created by human activities - with coercion of the views of others leading to 'demons', lying leading to 'phantoms', and bad social systems to 'spectres'. Spirits are also created in the association of humans and animals, whilst other spiritual entities connect us with the arts. Steiner emphasises the importance of developing and appreciating the arts - such as music, sculpture, architecture, painting and poetry - for the sake of humanity's future evolution.

In March 2020, Are Thoresen contracted Covid-19. Whilst convalescing from the disease and suffering great exhaustion, he experienced a breakthrough in his daily meditation. Although he has always been able to 'see' into the spiritual world, now deeper, unknown realms appeared to his inner vision. In the soapstone surround of the fireplace in his Norwegian home, he perceived the elemental beings and forces that make up the mineral at an atomic level. A few days later, an even deeper dimension revealed itself, in the form of a void or vacuum. Here, astonishingly, was an open portal to the entire cosmos... In Travels on the Northern Path of Initiation, Thoresen shares the results of his latest spiritual investigations, including a moving, life-changing encounter with 'the Light of the World'. He details the teachings he receives from the beings Vidar and Balder - who stand as guardians to the threshold of the outer etheric world - and characterizes the Northern way of initiation, which is based on merging, or 'fading', into nature. Thoresen documents Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of this path and shows how it is reflected in the Old Norse Poetic Edda, the Kalevala and von Eschenbach's Parzival. Based on painstaking research, he describes the individual qualities of the three elemental realms, and how the adversarial forces - seeking to corrupt human senses - hinder spiritual observation of them. Thoresen's book is a powerful personal testimony to the human potential for spiritual knowledge and experience in our time.

That there is a living stream of Johannine Christianity can no longer be doubted. There is now an abundant literature from Rosicrucian and esoteric traditions - from the deepest prayer and meditation - that addresses the exalted nature of John the Evangelist as expressed through his Gospel, Letters and the Book of Revelation. Yet it fell to Hermann Beckh to elucidate clearly how the individual known as 'John' became the source of such undying love and wisdom in Christ. According to Rudolf Steiner, John was the ailing Lazarus, called from death to a new life as 'the disciple Jesus loved'. Beckh demonstrates how John's invaluable writings were based on personal spiritual knowledge and experience, expressing the divine work of the Cosmic Christ on human nature and on the Earth, leading far into the future. Whilst Beckh's authorship originated within the context of the emerging Christian Community founded in 1922, his profoundly original books could not be confined to its framework. Not only could Beckh tackle original texts in Tibetan, Sanskrit and Avestan, but - through his independent vision - he was able to establish new links with philosophical Alchemy, Jakob Boehme, Goethe, Nietzsche and Novalis. He thereby stands with these figures as a co-worker in a greater community. Having prepared the way with his Mark's Gospel of 1928, John's Gospel could be described as the capstone of Beckh's writings - as a triumphant announcement that theology and the study of John's Gospel have finally come of age. Appearing here in a freshly revised translation by Alan Stott, the current volume is enhanced by a series of valuable addenda that shed further light on Beckh's significant achievements.

In ancient times humanity possessed an innate knowledge of the spiritual foundations of existence. Such knowledge could be acquired through inwardly accompanying the cycle of the year and its connected great seasonal festivals. But this instinctive knowledge had to be lost in order for human beings to discover individual freedom. In our time, as Sergei O. Prokofieff demonstrates in this comprehensive work, '...this knowledge must be found anew through the free, light-filled consciousness of the fully developed human personality'. Tracing the spiritual path of the yearly cycle, Prokofieff penetrates to the deeper esoteric realities of the seven Christian festivals of Michaelmas, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Whitsun and St John's Tide. Basing his research on the work of the twentieth-century initiate Rudolf Steiner, he reveals how these festivals are spiritual facts that exist independently of religious traditions and cultural customs. Working with the festivals in an esoteric sense can provide a true path of initiation, ultimately enabling an experience of the Being of the Earth, Christ. The journey of study through this book can thus lead the reader to an experience of the modern Christian-Rosicrucian path, along which '...it is possible to take the first steps towards life in partnership with the course of cosmic existence'.

In a concise study, Rudolf Steiner presents an inspirational sketch of the evolution of the Mysteries - from ancient Persia through Egypt and Greece, to the Christian era and the present day. He traces the line of initiates from Egyptian divinities Isis and Osiris to Moses, King Arthur's Round Table and the Holy Grail in the twelfth century. Steiner focuses on the process of initiation as a historical topic: how initiation worked in ancient Egypt and in the late Middle Ages. But his presentation is also inspirational, leading to the question: How can we advance to initiation now? He underscores the potential for achieving enlightenment today without a teacher in the flesh, and explains the four stages of the process towards initiation. He also highlights the need for strenuous efforts to overcome the subtle power of evil - in the form of Lucifer and Ahriman - through selfless work. The four lectures collected here form an important landmark in Rudolf Steiner's biography: the first being delivered on 3 February 1913 - the very day that the Anthroposophical Society was founded. First published in English under the title The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity and unavailable for many years, this edition has been re-edited by Professor Frederick Amrine and features appendices, an index as well as an introduction by Robert McDermott. Four lectures, Berlin, 3-7 Feb. 1913, GA 144

In an absorbing series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner discloses factors in a person's life on Earth that will influence their experiences in the spiritual world after their death - and conversely, factors in the spiritual world that will affect their next life on Earth. Steiner focuses on the period in the afterlife when the individual has been through kamaloka - the purgatorial place where the soul is purified. Once the soul has been cleansed of its astral sheath, it becomes open to cosmic influences, expanding into the planetary sphere. Now it can begin preparation for reincarnation - for a new human life on Earth. Steiner addresses the vital relationship of the living to the dead - in particular, how those on Earth can influence the souls of the dead. He also speaks on themes of 'Sleep and death', 'The seven-year life cycles of man', and offers a 'Christmas gift' in the form of a lecture on Christian Rosenkreutz and Gautama Buddha. He ends with a mighty picture of the Mystery of Golgotha: Jesus Christ's death on the cross was only seemingly a death; in reality it enabled the momentous birth of the Earth-Soul. Long out-of-print, the freshly-revised text of the ten lectures in this new edition is complemented with an introduction, notes and appendices by Professor Frederick Amrine, and also features an index. Ten lectures, Berlin, Nov.-Apr. 1913, GA 141

In this third, enlarged edition of Lehrs' classic study, the reader is led, step by step, to a spiritual-scientific method of investigation. The author demonstrates how one can transcend the boundaries of the physical-material world, to the metaphysical origins of nature and the human being. This is a pioneering new method of training both the mind and eye, as well as other human senses, leading to a transformation from our modern 'onlooking' consciousness to a new kind of 'participative' consciousness. The beginnings of this method were formulated by Goethe (1749-1832) more than 200 years ago, but his contemporaries offered little in the way of fertile ground for his ideas. It was Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) who recognized the significance of 'Goetheanism' for the future development not only of science, but of human culture in general, and who developed Goethe's work in modern times. Man or Matter contains the systematic results of the author's work using the methods of Goethe and Steiner (the latter whom he knew personally). With this unique study, he addresses himself to anyone - with or without a specialized scientific training - who is concerned with developing the human power of cognition in the present time. This revised edition was edited by Nick Thomas and Peter Bortoft.

Rudolf Steiner shows how deeply and intimately human beings, the microcosm, are related to the macrocosm. But for Steiner the macrocosm is more than just the physical universe. It includes many hidden realms - like the world of Elements and the world of Archetypes - which lie behind outer manifestations such as our physical body. The macrocosm works within us continuously - in the daily alternation between sleeping and waking and in the great cyclical interchange between incarnation on earth and our time between death and rebirth. Steiner discusses the various paths of self-development that lead across the threshold to spiritual dimensions, transforming human soul-forces into organs of higher perception. In future we will even have the capacity to evolve a form of thinking that is higher than the intellect - the thinking of the heart. In this classic series of lectures, now retranslated and featuring a previously-unavailable public address, Rudolf Steiner also discusses: the planets and their connection with our sleeping and waking life; the inner path of the mystic; the 'greater' and 'lesser' guardians of the threshold; the Egyptian mysteries of Osiris and Isis; initiation in the Northern mysteries; The four spheres of the higher worlds; mirror-images of the macrocosm in man; the strengthening powers of sleep; the symbol of the Rose Cross; reading the Akashic Record; four-dimensional space; the development of future human capacities, and much more. The volume includes an introduction, notes and index.

Hermann Beckh's masterful study of Mark's Gospel offers much more than scholarly argument. It is the work of a true visionary who allows his readers to discover the meaning of the Earth and of humanity for themselves. Beckh was in the forefront of entirely new research and recovery of the Gospel, writing more for the future than for his own time. It is not uncommon for biblical scholars to view St. Mark's Gospel as little more than an assemblage of fragmentary sources and a copy of uncertain, early memories. The Gospel is said to have little historical veracity, harmony or guiding structure. Beckh's contemporary, the German writer Arthur Drews, even argued that the text was nothing more than a simplistic solar myth, wherein another Sun-hero pursued his way around the Greco-Roman constellations. Mark's Gospel: The Cosmic Rhythm is a response to such twentieth-century materialistic thinking. He was asked to write the book in the 1920s by the leaders of The Christian Community, who sought to rescue the desecrated Gospel from its opponents. Inspired by Rudolf Steiner and a vast knowledge of ancient languages - Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali and Avestan along with Hebrew, Greek and Latin - the Rev. Professor Hermann Beckh perceived how the Gospel reflects God's Everlasting Covenant, and meticulously expressed its aesthetic unity, the consonance of its parts and its consequent radiant clarity. His far-reaching understanding of sacred texts in the original languages, always associated with the disciplined meditation he had attained from anthroposophy, led to unprecedented insight. This new edition of his classic study has been revised and redesigned.

'Once one has passed through powerlessness and refinds oneself, one also finds Christ. Before we can gain access to the Christ Impulse, we must plumb the depths of our own feelings of insignificance, and this can only happen when we view our strengths and capacities without any pride.' How does one find the Christ today? Rudolf Steiner emphasizes the importance of striving for self-knowledge, the significance of experiencing powerlessness, and the eventual resurrection from powerlessness. In this important lecture, he also speaks about the ancient Academy of Gondishapur, the significance of the year 666, the mission of Islam, as well as the crucial consequences of the Ecumenical Council of 869.

Relationships are built through dialogue - through exploring heartfelt questions that lead to liberating personal insights. This book shows how such dialogue can transform relationships and build community. However, true meeting and healing conversations take effort. Encounter involves light and dark. Relationships bring out sympathy and antipathy. In an age of digital communications and internet-based encounters - when alienation and loneliness are very real issues - this new edition of Margarete van den Brink's classic work is more vital than ever. The process of inner development - leading ultimately to the unification of the human self with its higher, spiritual being - involves a transformation in our everyday selves. In this act of initiation, the art of conversation plays a central role. The words which people speak to each other contain a force that can work in an invigorating and life-enhancing way. This force - which can be more precious than light itself - is the highest creative principle, the Word referred to in the Gospel of St John, which created everything that exists. Informed by the insights of anthroposophy, More Precious than Light indicates the path towards the spirit and the lost power of the Word, transforming relationships and building community. True encounter can only be fostered through building real connections with our fellow human beings.