Many individuals with autism are highly intelligent and gifted, but some are effectively imprisoned in their bodies and unable to communicate verbally. However, developments in technology have enabled autistic people to transmit their thoughts directly. In this true account, three autistic people, two of them brothers, speak via the method of 'facilitated communication', with the aid of a computer keypad. What is conveyed are not just everyday thoughts and experiences, but surprising and sometimes shattering spiritual and metaphysical perceptions. The conversations reveal remarkable clairvoyant gifts, such as the ability to read other people's thoughts, to see past lives, and to communicate with supernatural entities. Erik speaks of a past life during the Second World War, and the horrendous experience of being killed at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As a result of this, his soul had no desire to reincarnate on earth - although he also describes encounters with Christ, and how these eventually led to his present life. Andreas speaks of his perceptions of elemental beings - nature spirits - and how we can develop more intimate contact with such entities, for example through special kinds of music. He also describes Christ's workings in nature as well as his Second Coming. Each of the interviewees discuss meditation and how it can engender vital spiritual processes and perceptions. Together, their insights provide an astonishing glimpse into the way some people with autism appear to experience the world, and how their knowledge can enrich our own. Additional interviews with educators and therapists, working with people with disabilities in the autistic spectrum, give a broad view of progressive and inspirational educational methods.

`People often ask us about the best way to come close to nature and the beings enchanted within it. One way to do so is through wonder and astonishment, to open our senses fully to nature's beauty and wisdom. And here we can encounter entities that most closely resemble human beings - the trees.' Verena has learned to communicate with elemental and nature beings, and to translate their language into terms we can understand. In her remarkable book Nature Spirits and What They Say, she conversed with a range of beings, including spirits of fire, air, water and stone. In this new volume, we hear from trees, the nature spirits that in many ways are most similar to human beings. Through Verena's remarkable clairvoyant abilities, conversations with different tree species - such as sweet cherry, rowan, elm and common oak - are relayed. These communications reveal compelling insights into the role of trees within the natural world and their relationships with the vegetable, animal, human and spirit kingdoms. Particular emphasis is placed on the characteristics of trees that correspond with qualities of the human soul, such as the oak's connection to individualism. The tree spirits want to speak, and are responsive all kinds of questions, such as their roles in the landscape, their specific shapes, on problems that affect them in particular, and on urgent issues that are relevant to all beings on earth, such as climate change. The interviews disclose beautiful, fascinating and often challenging insights, offering inspiration to help us build more constructive relationships to these wonderful entities.

I believe, a time will come when greater distance makes the conflicts in the Anthroposophical Society - which at first sight seem so ugly - appear as part of the struggle for anthroposophy in the twentieth century. When this future dawns it will be important to be able to reach back to a historical documentation of what happened. - Emanuel Zeylmans Following the re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Foundation Meeting in 1923, Ita Wegman, Rudolf Steiner's closest collaborator at the end of his life, became the object of intense opposition, systematic exclusion, and misunderstanding. This ostracism and misinformation continued after her death, kept alive by prejudice and untruths that created an atmosphere that made a clear and unbiased view of her role in Anthroposophy impossible. Because no real biography existed, even the open-minded and impartial found it difficult to make an informed judgment. This lack was filled by Emanuel Zeylmans' three-volume work, Who Was Ita Wegman? To write it, he researched 100 undated notebooks, 2,000 manuscript pages, and 6,000 letters. Sifting through these was an enormous labor. To reach the esoteric heart of "the Wegman question" took him twelve years. What he found was extraordinary and of paramount importance to anyone interested in Anthroposophy and the divisive karma of its history. In Ita Wegman and Anthroposophy, Wolfgang Weirauch of the German journal Flensburger Heft interviews Emanuel Zeylmans. Speaking candidly about the deepest aspects of his revelatory findings, Zeylmans describes how his passionate need unfolded to understand what happened both to Ita Wegman and Anthroposophy. He talks of meetings with those who knew her intimately. He tells of her collaboration with Rudolf Steiner and her fraught relations with Marie Steiner and Edith Maryon, both of whom also had special relationships with Steiner. He describes the Christmas Foundation Meeting and the conflicts that followed Steiner's death that led to Ita Wegman's expulsion from the Executive Council. Though this book will be of special interest to those who want to understand the history of the Anthroposophical Society, it would be a mistake to consider it a book about the past. It is a book about the future of Anthroposophy.

`I can perceive spiritual beings in my surroundings... I can communicate with higher spirit beings of either an elemental or non-elemental kind, when they are willing. I can perceive the human aura, as well as certain areas of the astral plane... I can see the aura of plants and animals. I can speak with the guardian beings of plants and animals, inasmuch as they're interested...' - Verena Stae l von Holstein; Verena has learned to see and speak to elemental and nature beings. What's more, she is able to translate their language into human terminology and thought. In this remarkable book, seventeen nature spirits are interviewed through her, almost as if these beings were sitting in front of us. Through the conversations we learn what spirits of fire, air, water and stone have to say - as well as hearing from beings of glass, silver, salt, paper, and even spirits of our dwellings and homes! They speak about their work with nature and their regrettable lack of contact with human beings. They describe the secrets of the cosmos, and tell of humankind's past and future. The nature beings have surprising views on the environment, on natural disasters, good and evil, love and redemption. The interviews throw up beautiful, but sometimes disturbing insights into our world. Nature Spirits and What They Say offers an enchanting view of the world of elemental beings - but it also calls on us to recognize the seriousness of the situations they describe. As Verena explains, humans owe a huge amount to nature spirits, and we need to discover new ways of approaching them with full consciousness. This valuable book gives us the means to do just that.

We Turn Our Hearts To The Earth contains conversations with various spirit and nature beings about the oil spill caused by the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling station in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Water, Oil, Sand, Stone, the Ocean Depths, a Bird Being, and the Pelican Angel talk about the effects of this catastrophe on their individual spheres of life and being.

This book continues the series of interviews with the nature spirits that began with Nature Spirits and What They Say (Floris Books). In the first half, the spirits take a look back at the effect the publication of this book had on their worlds. Other topics spoken about are the First Iraq War, the Black Magician from Mexico, and the Elemental Body Spirit. In addition to familiar characters such as Miller, the High One, and the Watery One, we also meet Crown, the Tree Shepherd and Conradin, the Dwarf. The second half of the book consists of answers from the nature spirits to questions that German readers were invited to submit. The topics covered range from establishing contact with nature spirits to healing, electrosmog, art, water quality, and much more.