Honoring Life

Honoring Life: Medical Ethics and Physician-Assisted Suicide

Sergei O. Prokofieff (author), Peter Selg (author)

Translated by Willoughby Ann Walshe

This thought-, feeling-, and will-provoking book of reflections by Peter Selg and Sergei Prokofieff on the soul-spiritual, ethical, and medicaltherapeutic issues surrounding physician-assisted suicide (and suicide as such) takes its inspiration from both Rudolf Steiner and the ancient Greek Hippocratic Oath. Peter Selg begins by showing how, for Rudolf Steiner, the principle of life-as immanent spirit and the living medium of the "I" or individuality-is inviolable and wise beyond our reckoning. It is the sacred task of healing always to attend to, honor, and serve life in this sense: to affirm, enhance, and strengthen the life-forces of the sick. As Rudolf Steiner puts it: "The will to heal must always function as therapeutically as possible... even when one thinks the sick person is incurable." Though these words were spoken before the full consummation of materialist, technologically-enhanced medicine, Rudolf Steiner, as Peter Selg demonstrates, was well aware of the dangers of where medicine was heading. Sergei Prokofieff links the initiatory origins of Hippocratic medicine in the Mysteries with the return of the Mystery origin of medicine and healing in Anthroposophical medicine. Turning to Rudolf Steiner's spiritual research, he considers suicide as an "illness" of our time and examines the spiritual consequences of suicide for the after-death experiences of those who have taken their own life: namely, that suicide results in the soul's profound disorientation. He then goes on to show how suicide makes the after-death experience of Christ infinitely more difficult, as it does the "resurrection of the spirit" and the relation to the spiritual world. Far from being a "free" act, he concludes, suicide is quite the opposite. Anyone seeking insight into suicide will find here a profound and esoteric introduction to the problem.

Sergei O. Prokofieff (1954-2014) was born in Moscow, where he studied fine arts and painting at the Moscow School of Art. At an early age he encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and quickly realized that his life would be dedicated to the Christian path of esoteric knowledge. He wrote his first book, Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries, while living in Soviet Russia, and it was published in English in 1994. After the fall of Communism, he helped establish the Anthroposophical Society in Russia. In 2001, he became a member of the Executive Council of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. More than 30 of his books have been translated into English. Sergei Prokofieff passed away in Dornach, Switzerland.

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.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Steiner Books (7 Mar. 2014)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 86 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9781621480532
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 0.53 x 21.59 cm