Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Search results 151 through 160 of 262

˂ 1 ... 14 15 16 17 18 ... 27 ˃
55. The Origin of Suffering the Origin of Evil Illness and Death: What Do We Understand by Illness and Death 13 Dec 1906, Berlin
Translated by Mabel Cotterell, Violet E. Watkin

For in an immortal body there could never live a soul who had independence, consciousness, and consequently egoism. Hence a mortal body goes together with a soul having consciousness of personality and a one-sided development of the personality towards impulses to action.
At that time the physical principle works upon the physical body in the same way as, before the birth of a child, the forces and substances of the mother's organism work upon the embryo. In the physical body from the seventh year until puberty, the working of the etheric body is paramount, and, from puberty on, that of the forces anchored in the astral body.
The human being thrusts a sheath away, and his development is understood only when we grasp that something that resembles a physical birth takes place in spiritual life at the changing of the teeth. At about the seventh year the human being is actually born a second time; that is to say, his etheric body is born to free activity just as his physical body is at the moment of physical birth.
121. The Mission of Folk-Souls: Lecture Four 10 Jun 1910, Oslo
Translator Unknown

If you remember what has been said about the education of the child from the standpoint of spiritual science, you will admit that man, in the period between his physical birth and the changing of the teeth, that is up to his seventh year, principally develops his physical body.
In the second stage, in the time between his seventh and his fourteenth year, he would have a sleep consciousness. From his fourteenth to his twentieth year, he would be very active inwardly, but he would live in a sort of dream-consciousness. Only after this consciousness as a Moon-being, at about his one-and-twentieth year, would man really wake up. Then only would he arrive at the ‘I’-consciousness.
56. Heaven 14 May 1908, Berlin

This cover flows into the spiritual world itself. The human consciousness flashes in another state. The only difference between the disembodied and the embodied human being is that the disembodied one lives in another state of consciousness, and that he perceives the creative forces.
Thus, we must get clear about the fact that the state of consciousness is different from that in the supersensible world. By a comparison, we can still bring to our mind how the state of consciousness is different between the physical world and the supersensible world.
It is no concept of a dream world in which we shall be. The creative consciousness is much brighter and more intense than in the physical world. Hence, we have to imagine the life, the consciousness of the human being in the creative world also as more intense than in the physical world.
67. The Eternal human Soul: Goethe as Father of Spiritual Research 21 Feb 1918, Berlin

There are certain persons who have a kind of naive clairvoyance, a kind of naive beholding consciousness. Now it is far from my mind to state that Goethe had a kind of naive beholding consciousness only, but Goethe had a special disposition by which he differs from someone who only is able to get to the beholding consciousness by the conscious development of the deeper abilities of his soul.
. Goethe did not have the beholding consciousness from the start, but in the course of his development it was to him a self-evident fact to develop certain abilities unlike other people do.
Then without fail Goethe is a model of the development of the beholding consciousness, of those spiritual forces, which really lead into the spiritual world, into the everlasting.
13. Occult Science - An Outline: Sleep And Death
Translated by George Adams, Mary Adams

[ 1 ] The essence of man's waking consciousness cannot be penetrated without observing the condition he lives through in sleep; so too, is the riddle of life insoluble without the study of death.
For instance, a man dreams that he is standing near the edge of a cliff and sees a child running towards it. The dream lets him undergo all the tortures of the thought, “What if the child should fail to notice and fall over!”
[ 13 ] After the time of purification an entirely new state of consciousness begins for the I of man. Before death, perceptions came to him from without, for the light of his consciousness to fall upon them.
250. The History of the German Section of the Theosophical Society 1902-1913: On the Seven-year Anniversary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society 02 Nov 1909, Berlin

Anyone who has only superficially observed life within our German Section – not to mention the fact that everything that can be said about it appears all the more sharply and intimately when viewed more deeply – can truly say that this first cycle of our theosophical work can be compared quite accurately with the individual development that a child undergoes from birth to the change of teeth, when it gets its second, then permanent teeth. For anyone who really wants to look at the events will not be able to help saying that the overview that could be obtained during the days of our General Assembly has shown that we are dealing with a number of feverish symptoms that our changing teeth have caused in the past few weeks and months.
And now, after I have properly absorbed this matter about the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness soul, and so on, I listen to these four lectures in much the same way as I used to read a novella that spoke quite easily to my soul."
53. Fundamentals of Theosophy The Origin of the Earth 09 Mar 1905, Berlin

The view of the human being, as I have described it, was similar in the pre-Lemurian time. But it was not pervaded with consciousness. Only a dim consciousness existed in the human being. Indeed, at that time on this level he already felt what was hot and cold; he had a sense of touch and could perceive certain differences of density.
He will regain this ability maintaining his present reasonability and his clear waking consciousness. Once the whole humankind attains a state which today only the practical mystic, the clairvoyant has.
What we work today becomes our ability later. I have often pointed to the child that learns to write and read. When the child has grown up, it can write and read. What was labour, what was intercourse with the outside world before has disappeared, but the fruit, the result has remained.
10. Initiation and Its Results (1909): The Astral Centers and the Constitution of the Etheric Body
Translated by Clifford Bax

He held them as a gift of Nature, when he was yet in a dreamy, dull state of consciousness. At that stage of human evolution they were already active. The manner of their activity, however, was only compatible with the dull state of consciousness already mentioned.
These currents and movements are almost entirely independent of the human will and consciousness, just as the action of the heart or stomach in the physical body is independent of our will.
The spiritual ego matures in the physical self, as the child in the mother's womb. The health of the child depends upon the normal working of natural laws in the womb of the mother.
10. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (1947): Some Results of Initiation
Translated by George Metaxa, Henry B. Monges

Man himself contributed nothing to this development; he received them as a gift from nature, at a time when his consciousness was in a dull, dreamy condition. At that stage of human evolution they were in active use, but the manner of their activity was only compatible with that dull state of consciousness.
The spiritual self matures in the physical self as a child in the mother's womb. The child's health depends upon the normal functioning of natural laws in the maternal womb.
And even as the child, out of a dim life instinct, acquired the requisite forces, so, too, can man acquire the powers of the spiritual world before his higher self is born.
299. The Genius of Language: History of Language in Its Relation to the Folk Souls 31 Dec 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Ruth Pusch, Gertrude Teutsch

Leichnam ‘corpse’ is really a somewhat redundant expression, a structure such as a child creates when it combines two similar sounding words like bow-wow or quack-quack, where the meaning arises through repetition.
Speech itself is being pushed down into an unconscious region, while the upper consciousness tries to catch the thought. Look closely at what is going on as soul-event. By letting the sound associations fall into unconsciousness, human beings have raised their consciousness to mental pictures (Vorstellen) and perceptions that no longer are immersed in language sounds and sound associations.
[In English we have many similar double phrases from earliest times: might and main; time and tide; rack and ruin; part and parcel; top to toe; neither chick nor child—and many of them are alliterative, that is, repeating the same consonant at the beginning of both words.].

Results 151 through 160 of 262

˂ 1 ... 14 15 16 17 18 ... 27 ˃