For people who are in daily contact with those who are ill or in need, it can become easy to forget the bigger picture and purpose of healing, and focus just on the day-to-day mechanics. Anthroposophical medicine encompasses not only the body but also the soul and the individual biography, bringing a broader dimension to modern medicine. Peter Selg shows how anthroposophical therapies draw heavily on the Christian concept of healing as seen in the New Testament. Practically, he suggests that healers and caregivers can, through meditation, allow the healing power of Christ to work. They must also recognize that sickness can be part of a person's destiny, and that the healing can help realize the purpose of the sickness for the person's individual biography. Nurses, caregivers, social workers, therapists, counselors and doctors will benefit from this insightful book.

Seeing Christ in Sickness and Healing

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Selg, Peter

Alternative Medicine

Floris Books

This book follows Karl König's spiritual journey from his early years to the end of his life. Through the words of his diaries, in which his battles with health and his impatient temperament are recorded with merciless honesty, we can follow his inner path that led to profound insights into the nature of children with special needs. His personal wrestlings and innate spirituality laid the foundation for his work in the Camphill Schools and Villages. Includes facsimile reproductions of some of König's original diary pages.

Karl Konig's Path into Anthroposophy: Reflections from his Diaries (Karl Konig Archive, 2)

König, Karl

Religion & Spirituality

Ita Wegman, born in 1876 to a Dutch family living in Indonesia, first met Rudolf Steiner in Berlin in 1902 when she was 26 years old. She studied medicine at the University of Zurich and in 1917, following Steiner's indications, developed a treatment for cancer using mistletoe. In 1921 she founded the first anthroposophical medical clinic, in Arlesheim, Switzerland, followed in 1922 by the Sonnenhof home for children with special needs. Karl König first met Wegman in 1927, and she quickly recognized his great potential, as well as his weaknesses. She invited him to work at the Arlesheim clinic as her assistant, and encouraged and advised him in his medical work. This book includes the complete correspondence between König and Wegman.

Ita Wegman and Karl König: Letters and Documents (Karl König Archive, 3)

Biographies & Memoirs

Wegman, Ita

Professionals & Academics

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 physical appearance, temperament, ways of moving, and environment. In The Therapeutic Eye, Dr. Peter Selg discusses Steiner’s views on childhood development, how teachers can look at children, and ways that these approaches can be used to develop lessons and classroom activities to deal with behavioral extremes and learning challenges. The Therapeutic Eye is a valuable resource for teachers and parents. The Therapeutic Eye is a translation from German of Der therapeutische Blick: Rudolf Steiner sieht Kinder.

The Therapeutic Eye: How Rudolf Steiner Observed Children

Parenting & Relationships

SteinerBooks

“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 Steiner Adolescence is the period during which we first sense, as human beings, our responsibility for earthly existence, and, inevitably, it is a time of turbulent transition and inner turmoil. During the first two seven-year periods of life, our soul, spiritual being gradually incarnates. With puberty, it takes hold of our whole being and turns outward to befriend the Earth and the forces of life and death. Steiner calls this profound inner transformation “a grand metamorphosis.” As parents and teachers and as individuals who still bear its fruits and wounds, we all know the contours of the upheaval. However, educational and parenting practices too often ignore it, unaware that the great changes in our children call for equally great changes in us. To remedy this, Dr. Peter Selg proposes, “Use Rudolf Steiner’s work to highlight the fundamental structure of the crisis of adolescence and the pedagogical challenges that emerge as a result.” As a psychiatrist who has worked intensively with adolescents in crisis, and who carries a deep existential and thorough scholarly knowledge of Steiner’s teachings, Dr. Selg highlights the radical nature of Steiner’s approach, which demands that teachers and parents change as their children change. Drawing on Steiner’s practical admonitions during lectures and teacher’s meetings, Selg reminds us that the ideal of Waldorf teachers is “to educate by behaving in such a manner that, through their behavior, children can educate themselves.” This is especially true once children reach sexual maturity, when teachers must not teach young people so much as welcome them as independent, equal individuals, able to transform the gift of sympathies and antipathies into a new moral orientation out of their own essential nature. Teachers must therefore be able to speak directly and authentically about the world. Abstractions and generalities have no place in the dialog; young people want to know the real causes of things and want to be addressed as equals. Selg also points out that teachers must be aware of the growing difference between the sexes and the way each carries a different secret life inwardly. Steiner’s indications provide a timeless method of meeting students in the right way. The detailed spiritual-scientific indications in this book help parents and teachers to become well equipped with deeper understanding for the challenge of adolescence. The appendix includes speeches by a graduate of the first Waldorf school and one of the first teachers, as well as a letter by Dr. Ita Wegman, each of which reveals an intimate reflection on the life of the Waldorf school during its earliest years and an earnest hope for the future growth of this approach to education. “In a way, a teacher has to be a prophet...dealing with what will live in the future generation, not in the present.” Dr. Selg also provides copious notes that offer practical wisdom and many avenues for readers to take up their own research. This volume is a translation from German of «Eine grandiose Metamorphose: Zur geisteswissenschaftlichen Anthropologie und Pädagogik des Jugendalters».

A Grand Metamorphosis: Contributions to the Spiritual-Scientific Anthropology and Education of Adolescents

Psychology & Counseling

Read an excerpt from this book (PDF). 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 Essence of Waldorf Education is a translation from German of Der geistige Kern der Waldorfschule (Verlag Ita Wegman Institut, 2009).

The Essence of Waldorf Education

Christian Books & Bibles

The healthy social life is found When in the mirror of each human being The whole community finds its reflection And when in the community The virtue of each one is living. Rudolf Steiner understood that human social, ethical, and moral development lagged far behind what had been achieved in knowledge, science, and technology; and that what human beings had achieved in these fields rested on what caused social and moral life to be untenable for so many, namely, the universal rule of egoism and self-interest. In 1905, a historic year of political and economic crises, Rudolf Steiner formulated what he called the basic "social axiom” or “the cosmic law of work": The well-being of an entire group of individuals who work together is the greater, the less individuals claim the income resulting from their own accomplishments for themselves, that is, the more they contribute this income to their fellow workers and the more their own needs are met not through their own efforts but through the efforts of others. Underlying this "fundamental social law" is the seminal realization that human social reality pivots on the question of work and compensation. Does one work for oneself, for one’s salary? Or does one work for others, the community or larger society? For Rudolf Steiner, it was critical to understand that work should be a free deed. In other words, work and income should be completely separated. In this profound work, Peter Selg traces how, at the end of the Great War, with Steiner’s tireless efforts for the threefold movement, this fundamental social-spiritual insight moved into the center of his activities as an overriding practical and spiritual concern, rephrased as the "motto of social ethics," and deepened and filled with the full reality of Christ’s teachings and life. Anyone interested in a just, equitable, healthy, and spirit-based social future should read The Fundamental Social Law.

The Fundamental Social Law: Rudolf Steiner on the Work of the Individual and the Spirit of Community

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

In many of his lectures to teachers on education, Rudolf Steiner called attention to a significant but often overlooked change in the way children experience themselves and the world that occurs in the middle of childhood, in the ninth or tenth year. “There comes a time when children show, not in what they say but in their whole behavior, that they are struggling with a question or a number of questions that indicates a crisis in their soul life. It is a very subtle experience for the child that requires an equally subtle response.” In this deep and concise book, Peter Selg illuminates this momentous phenomenon in child development, this “dramatic change” in the child’s consciousness. Though it is “hardly noticeable” to the observer, Steiner reveals that children during this time in life experience a sudden inner instability, a loss of the foundation they felt had been naturally supporting and carrying them. It is a crisis that pediatric psychologists and psychiatrists know well, as many fears and weaknesses that rise to the surface later, in adolescence, can be traced back to this subtle event. Parents and educators need to know what to say and how to act, because their response at this time will be crucial for the child’s entire life. Through Steiner’s profound wisdom of children's inner essence, adults can learn to give them the experience of being carried by a strong and sure relationship: "When children cross the Rubicon between the ninth and tenth year without that feeling, something will be lacking in their later life, and they will have to struggle to attain what they should have received naturally at that moment in childhood." I Am Different from You is a vital book for all parents and teachers to read―well before the crisis in the middle of childhood―to recognize what is necessary to support children during this decisive event in the right way.

I Am Different from You: How Children Experience Themselves and the World in the Middle of Childhood

Steiner Books

“Only in our time has it become possible once again to unlock the sources of Rosicrucian wisdom and allow them to flow into the whole of culture… Christian Rosenkreutz has always lived among us and he is with us today too as the guide of spiritual life.... “The spiritual stream related to Christian Rosenkreutz offers the most potent assistance to those who strive to understand the Christ impulse.” ―Rudolf SteinerRudolf Steiner spoke often of the relationship of Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science to Rosicrucianism, but he spoke less of the being of Christian Rosenkreutz himself. As he said, “To speak of Christian Rosenkreutz presumes a profound trust in the mysteries of the life of the spirit―a trust or faith not in the person of Christian Rosenkreutz, but in the mysteries of spiritual life.” For Steiner, Christian Rosenkreutz was active in at least three ways. First, as one of the “great leaders of humanity,” he worked to bring esoteric spirituality into the modern world and to lead it into the future. Second, as “the greatest teacher of Christianity” he worked to bring to humanity true “heart knowledge” of Christ through the continued unveiling of the Mystery of Golgotha in the etheric. Third, as a concrete, particular individual being, Steiner had a living, actual, personal relationship with him. As such, because of our failure to understand, Steiner called him “a noble martyr...who, through his way of working, endured, and will in future endure, more than any other person. I say ‘person,’ for the suffering of Christ was the suffering of a god.”In the first part of this inspiring book―a work of devotion both to Rudolf Steiner and to Christian Rosenkreutz―Peter Selg, as “The Great Servant of Christ Jesus,” gives a detailed, chronological, and fascinating account of Steiner’s portrayal and, as much as possible, experiences of Christian Rosenkreutz. He shows how Steiner had essentially two teachers: the Master Jesus (Zoroaster) and Christian Rosenkreutz. Moreover, Selg shows how these two, with Rudolf Steiner, unfolded spiritual science for our time. In the second part, he shows how all this culminates, astonishingly and miraculously, in the Michael School as it manifested in the First Class. Rudolf Steiner and Christian Rosenkreutz concludes with an appendix containing the text of the original (1614) Fama, or “Announcement of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood.” All those interested in the esoteric foundations of Anthroposophy or in the true meaning of Rosicrucianism will be find this book of great value.

Rudolf Steiner and Christian Rosenkreutz

New Age & Spirituality

“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 a spiritual teacher. To help us do so, he gathered recollections of those of who knew Steiner personally―“historical witnesses to the ‘living phenomenon’ of the ‘figure of the teacher.” It is his hope that these firsthand accounts will help readers see and experience the amazing, ever-mysterious person that Rudolf Steiner was―a dynamic, energetic “dual citizen” of both the spiritual and the physical worlds. He moved constantly between these two realities, while his whole life was dedicated in service to the spiritual evolution of humanity. Nonetheless, he was also deeply sociable and a true friend, convivial, cheerful, humorous, and always able to enjoy―and tell―a good joke. He was also austere and painfully serious. In other words, Rudolf Steiner was a paradox. Steiner was “imposing,” but it would be difficult to say why. He was slim; there was no heaviness in him. Indeed, what seemed to strike most people first was his lightness. He moved rhythmically, youthfully, artistically, with quick, light steps, his posture erect but fluid, his head seeming to float between Heaven and Earth. Yet he was fully grounded. When he stood, it was as if nothing could move him. When he spoke, his gestures and tone expressed perfectly what he had to say. He was completely one with what he said, so that he changed as the content changed. Those who listened to his lectures found themselves transported to the source of what they were hearing. Sometimes “ten Steiners” would pass before them. To hear a lecture, was a meditation experience. Quite another figure appeared in conversations, which filled his every public moment. One experienced luminous kindness, selfless interest, and intense listening attention. It was as tough one were singled out in the world and having a sense of being allowed complete inner freedom. All who came to him for advice felt Steiner’s love. They felt that he saw the best in them and spoke from that point of view, whether it was a matter of life’s journey or esoteric training. By his example, then, he sought to exemplify the kind of spiritual community toward which he hoped anthroposophists would strive. For anyone who has wondered what Rudolf Steiner was like, this book will open many windows.

Rudolf Steiner as a Spiritual Teacher: From Recollections of Those Who Knew Him

Religious Studies

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