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Ita Wegman spent the last three years of her life in Tessin, in the
Casa Andrea Cristoforo. In this secluded province, largely
protected from the destructive events of those years and imbued
with certain forces, she developed a great work for the future,
gathering, leading, and nurturing people both therapeutically and
spiritually, preparing for the war's end with the full intensity of
her being. Her last three years were a period of devotion to Rudolf
Steiner and his work, as well as to esoteric Christianity-to the
forces of the Archangel Michael and to Christ for the present and
future. She continued to take a great interest in the difficulties
of her time and never ceased to participate in events-taking in
refugee children and the homeless, keeping up extensive
correspondences with others, struggling with aid organizations and
various agencies, caring daily for the afflicted and for patients
and colleagues. On March 4, 1943, Ita Wegman passed into the
spiritual worlds, well prepared and with all of the spiritual
intentions of a Christian initiate. This book contributes to
documenting the final phase of Ita Wegman's life, focusing on the
forces of the future that emerged in her. It draws on her notebooks
from her time in Ascona, as well as from her extensive
correspondence and memories of those who lived and worked at Casa
Andrea Cristoforo. She remained upstanding, free, and positive with
an esoteric Christian orientation and felt that she was obligated
only to her conscience and to the spiritual world for which Rudolf
Steiner stood and that she served. This book was originally
published in German as Die letzten drei Jahre. Ita Wegman in Ascona
1940-1943 (Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 2004).
Today's orthodox notions of science--which is to say, of
knowing--are exceedingly narrow; they posit, implicitly or
otherwise, that the only knowledge possible, if any, is that of the
physical world. But the skeleton key to unlocking the door, behind
which lies the root of the problems and difficulties of our age,
and thus their solution, is to be able to fully answer this
question: What is it to know something? This question lies at the
foundation of spiritual science. Rudolf Steiner had first to solve
it for himself, pointing the way for others to do the same (in, for
example, his Philosophy of Freedom), long before he could give such
lectures as these. Rudolf Steiner's work and words, still largely
undiscovered as compared to their value for humanity, continue to
point the way toward a different path--a way of knowing that
encompasses the fullness, the breadth and depth of life and the
worlds we inhabit. This knowing--which is to say, science--does not
ignore or even contradict the narrower physical sciences of
technologists and other specialists, but offers an expansive
understanding of reality that also includes a deeper engagement
with those aspects of our experience that we are told are beyond
the ken of science. But is truth not accessible through art? Are
poetry and literature, indeed the beauty and wisdom of each human
language, not portals through which we can glimpse truths, every
bit as real (though of a different order) than those we might grasp
through a microscope? These thirteen lectures were given in
Dornach, Switzerland, from January to May 1915, between the fifth
and ninth month of World War I. Given the interrupted, fragmented
nature of this sequence, one might assume that the lectures could
not possibly present a tight, coherent whole. This is not the case.
Rudolf Steiner lays down the framework for the series in a concise
but detailed manner in the first two lectures, and then goes on to
demonstrate in lecture after lecture how, on this basis, many
aspects of life reveal the hidden presence and activities of the
realities--and the approach--he has established in the framework.
In fact, it is humbling to witness Rudolf Steiner's powers of
attention and presence of mind: to see how, after a significant
interval, in the same tone of voice and with seamless continuity,
he can pick up and further develop and interweave his announced
intention: namely, to provide "a detailed look at things we have
been considering for years."
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