Far Beyond Our Ordinary Consciousness: Rudolf Steiner’s Final Courses, Dornach, September 1924 - Softcover

Selg, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1621484084 ISBN 13: 9781621484080

Publisher: SteinerBooks, 2026

Synopsis

“In September 1924, all of us who attended the new courses in Dornach felt we were living far beyond our ordinary consciousness. We felt lifted into another sphere; we all looked different, all seeing and hearing beyond our own capacities. When we looked at one another, we said, Is that really him? It was an incredible and indescribable experience. We were living in a world of spirit that was, of course, far beyond our own powers. There were moments during the final lectures of the pastoral medicine course when Rudolf Steiner emanated so much love and spirit that it was hard to listen to his actual words.” (Willem Zeylmans van Emmichoven)

In this study, Peter Selg illumines the period from September 5 to 28, 1924, in Dornach, when Rudolf Steiner gave seventy lectures in five parallel courses, met regularly with the workers at the Goetheanum, held four hundred individual consultations, and undertook countless initiatives, including sorting out the building application for the second Goetheanum. Drawing on first-hand accounts, Peter Selg sheds light on the harmony and coherence of these courses, on Rudolf Steiner’s intentions and the deeply moving picture of these final weeks in which he accomplished monumental feats, despite his forces being severely depleted. This work culminated in his last address on September 28, 1924, which is also printed here.

This book is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the final efforts of Rudolf Steiner to awaken humanity to its most important tasks.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Selg studied medicine in Witten-Herdecke, Zurich, and Berlin and, until 2000, worked as the head physician of the juvenile psychiatry department of Herdecke Hospital in Germany. Dr. Selg is director of the Ita Wegman Institute for Basic Research into Anthroposophy (Arlesheim, Switzerland), professor of medicine at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences (Germany), and co-leader of the General Anthroposophical Section at the Goetheanum. He is the author of numerous books on Rudolf Steiner, anthroposophy, medical ethics, and the development of culture and consciousness.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

“The three weeks that began now were entirely unique, not only in the history of the anthroposophical movement but in the history of ideas generally.” (E. Bock)

"Then you will be faithful servants of this Michael-thought, noble helpers of the Michaelic impulse that is to enter earthly evolution through anthroposophy." (R. Steiner)

In the first week of September 1924, more than a thousand people awaited Rudolf Steiner’s arrival and the beginning of the courses that had been announced. Emil Bock wrote about a crowd “filled with the greatest expectation,” a gathering of actors and speech artists, of physicians and Christian Community priests (nearly all of whom were there), and of countless other members of the Anthroposophical Society. According to Edwin Froböse, more than 700 had come for the Speech and Drama Course alone.

Emil Bock spoke in retrospect of an “overwhelming sense of expectation that grew from one day to the next.” Ernst Weissert, a student teacher from Tübingen who was only nineteen years old in September 1924, described a mood filled with “hope and enthusiasm for the future. . . . We sat together in the carpentry shop like a large circle of pupils at an ancient school of wisdom.” “One was often reminded of the great paintings of humanity, such as Raphael’s School of Athens.” On July 20, 1924, the day Steiner gave his Youth Lecture in Arnhem, Weissert and his anthroposophical friends in Tübingen had read the brief announcement for the Speech and Drama Course in the weekly journal Das Goetheanum. Courses on the Apocalypse of John (“Priests’ Course”) and on pastoral medicine (“Course for Theologians and Physicians”) were announced in the same journal on August 17, as were lectures for members and class lessons in the School of Spiritual Science. According to Albert Steffen, these events, which would ultimately amount to seventy lectures (including those to the workers at the Goetheanum) and six courses that were running in parallel, constituted a, if not the, “culmination” of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual activity. The Dutch psychiatrist Willem Zeylmans van Emmichhoven, who was thirty-one years old at the time and who attended the Karma Lectures, the Pastoral Medicine Course, the Speech and Drama Course, and the Class Lessons, wrote in retrospect:

In September 1924, all of us who attended the new courses in Dornach felt we were living far beyond our normal consciousness. We felt lifted into another sphere; we all looked different, all seeing and hearing beyond our own capacities. When we looked at one another, we said, Is that really him? It was an incredible, indescribable experience. We were living in a world of spirit that was far beyond our own powers. There were moments during the final lectures of the Pastoral Medicine Course when Rudolf Steiner emanated so much love and spirit that it was hard to listen to his actual words. The auditorium was also one into which he could wholly pour himself.

The twenty-nine-year-old eurythmist Annemarie Donath described a similar experience:

One felt lifted above everything, above ordinary life, swept along by a breath-taking intensity, at times hovering above a dizzying gulf, and then wondering if this was real or if it was even possible to reach such spiritual heights while still on earth. We sometimes even feared that such a divine gift might suddenly be shattered by our weakness.

As he was leaving the carpentry shop (Schreinerei) after one of the Apocalypse lectures, the farmer and Christian Community Priest Rudolf von Koschützki found himself face to face with Marie Steiner-von Sivers who stood deeply impressed but also shocked by what she had heard. “After one of the lectures on the Apocalypse . . . Frau Dr. Steiner stopped, looking at me for a moment as she was leaving, and said: Is this still a human being?”

It was an unforgettable experience for all who were present. According to Zeylmans, the listeners, or rather attendees, lived “far beyond their ordinary consciousness” in the substance of “love and spirit,” or as Donath described it, in the sphere of a “divine gift of breathtaking intensity” that continued to grow from one day to the next. Yet at the end of the Pastoral Medicine Course, Rudolf Steiner said: “Everything done here is only ever a fragment, a part, a first chapter.”
 

Edition details

• Publisher: SteinerBooks
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1621484084
• ISBN 13: 9781621484080
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112