The Occult Significance of Forgiveness

The Occult Significance of Forgiveness

The Occult Significance of Forgiveness has been read and loved by thousands of readers for years. It is perhaps the most heartfelt, accessible, and succinct of Prokofieff’s works on inner development.

If we survey recent and current times we see a gloomy picture of endless conflicts, wars, and widespread turmoil. The human emotional landscape is littered with anger and bitter vengeance that fill human thoughts, emotions, and actions. Even modern systems of “justice” are preoccupied with proving guilt and dealing out retribution, doing little to remedy the tragic situation. Nevertheless, there are individuals and groups seeking ways to break the vicious cycles of recrimination.

What we can do to change the world for the better? One of the most radical and challenging answers is to forgive others for what they do. In this powerful and moving book, Sergei Prokofieff shows how the forces that lead to forgiveness can be developed consciously and freely. Without preaching morality, he presents spiritual facts of forgiveness that illumine a path of reconciliation.

From Tsarist Russia and the concentration camps of Nazi Germany to the infighting during the early years of the Anthroposophical Society, the author offers striking examples of those who have been able to forgive frequently terrible crimes. He provides multilayered analyses and shows the beneficial consequences of each act of forgiveness. As he develops his theme, the importance of forgiving―not simply for personal salvation but for the advancement of human evolution―is revealed in all its healing truth.

C O N T E N T S:

Foreword

1. The Urgency of the Problem of Forgiveness in Our Time
2. The Fifth Petition of the “Lord’s Prayer” and the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch
3. Seven Examples of Forgiveness
4. The Nature of Forgiveness from a Spiritual–Scientific Viewpoint
5. Forgiveness as an Essential Part of the Modern Path to Christ
6. The Occult Significance of Forgiveness
7. The Nature of Forgiveness and the Sevenfold Manichaean Initiation
8. The Manichaean Impulse in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Postscript

Appendix 1: The Text of an “Appeal for Reconciliation” by Marie Steiner
Appendix 2. The Text of Ita Wegman’s written answer to the “Appeal”

About the Author

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.

Simon Blaxland de Lange has for many years worked as an educator for people with special needs. He is also a prolific writer and translator and an amateur musician and gardener. Blaxland de Lange helped establish Pericles Translations and Research, Pericles Training and Work (for adults with special needs), and the Pericles Theatre Company. Together with Dr Vivian Law, he cofounded the Humanities Research Group in 1997 and the British group of the Humanities Section of the School of Spiritual Science in 1998. He met Owen Barfield in 1979, and has been a student of his work for the past thirty years.