Awake! for the Sake of the Future

The implications of the worldview that arises from Anthroposophy, the life's work of Rudolf Steiner, are both primary and far-reaching. More nuanced than any remotely comparable approach, his work not only suggest the need for a fundamental alteration of our deeply ingrained tendency to passively accept the received wisdom of staid conventionality, it provides the concrete framework, for anyone with the will to do so, to wake up to reality in an entirely new way. This work and its implications are therefore, in short, both radical and potentially powerful. If this were not so, Anthroposophy would have no real impact and no real enemies. This has not been the case. On New Year's Eve 1922/23, the (First) Goetheanum, the architectural marvel and 'House of the Word' that was to stand as the fully realized physical-artistic embodiment of Anthroposophy on earth, was deliberately destroyed by fire. This was an unfathomably heavy blow to Rudolf Steiner and the entire Anthroposophical movement, Afterward, however, Steiner was adamant that not a single lecture or event scheduled to take place at the now-ruined Goetheanum would be canceled or postponed; he himself carried on with an even more determined, indeed fiery, resolve. The course of lectures contained in this book, begun on January 5, 1923, is living testament to that resolve. As truly relevant today as they were in 1923, if anything more so, these lectures are an exceptionally urgent and heartfelt articulation of what could be considered Steiner's core message and plea to modern humanity: simply put-for the sake of the future, wake up.