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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 191 through 200 of 262

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172. Insertion of Early Human Destiny into Extraterrestial Relationships 12 Nov 1916, Dornach
Translator Unknown

The purport of the ceremony was, as it were, to place into connection with the Cosmos—with processes beyond the Earth—chosen individuals within the temple-service. For then, into the consciousness of these chosen individuals—who were especially suited to receive Their influence—Beings who guided the Earth from regions far beyond, could work.
They will need to place themselves intelligently into the whole course and trend of human evolution when the question comes before them: How shall I place my child into this human evolution? It will depend on their large-minded understanding of this question. Today, out of a certain sloppiness of thought, it may still be possible to adhere to the old phrases which are a mere relic of former times and will soon reveal their emptiness—pretty phrases, which so many people still admire: ‘Observe the child's predisposition.
But it is its task in face of the developing and changing life of human callings. Demanded as it is by World-evolution itself upon the Earth, this insight must come into the hearts of men, in like measure as their occupations mechanise the human being.
190. The Spiritual Background of the Social Question: Lecture III 11 Apr 1919, Dornach
Translator Unknown

If I say "at the present time" we must naturally be aware that what is in question is a very long period, and when we speak of the "present time" today we mean the epoch of the consciousness soul, into which mankind entered roughly at the middle of the 15th century and which extends over 2,000 years.
The development of the Ego belongs to our epoch, although it particularly brings the consciousness- soul to expression. In passing over from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean epoch man passes over a sort of Rubicon (see diagram), when the whole of mankind enters into a phase of development which leads up to higher spirituality.
And just in the epoch of the development of consciousness, it ought to come to the consciousness that mankind is passing through this stage in its development.
272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: Goethe's “Faust” from the Point of View of Spiritual Science 23 Jan 1910, Strasburg

Birth and grave, An eternal sea, A changing weaving, A glowing life, So I create at the whirling loom of time And work the living garment of divinity.
Before the soul can go further, it must first, for brief moments, gain connection with the spiritual world, to know for a very short time what the spiritual world is. Then it is as if a spiritual child were born out of spiritual knowledge. But then come the moments of life again, when this spiritual child seems to have disappeared into the spiritual world.
The true mystic knows this voice, the voice that calls from the spiritual child to our soul as its mother. But this soul must go further. It must break away from that which is only personal passion.
78. Fruits of Anthroposophy: Lecture VI 03 Sep 1921, Stuttgart
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

Then we shall come to know what it means to live in a state of fully awake consciousness, a state where no mental images are formed but where the Imagining that went before has created inner energy and has been cleared of its contents. We shall then come to know what it means to live in such a state of energized consciousness. This we must come to know, and then we progress from Imagination to knowledge through Inspiration.
They say you have done well indeed.’ ‘Ah, child, I did a clever thing: I never gave a thought to thought.’ Goethe, Works published posthumously (1833), Poems.
254. Significant Facts Pertaining to the Spiritual Life of the Middle of the 19th Century: Lecture II 01 Nov 1915, Dornach
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

And what comes to expression in the wife and in the child of the Count relapses into a purely atavistic connection with the spiritual world. A great danger for our time is indicated here.
For example, among those primitive men there was widespread knowledge of how to handle a child during the period between birth and the seventh year so that as the result of a certain transformation of his etheric body which then worked back upon the brain, he could be made extremely clever.
It is the task of spiritual science today to help human beings to rise into the spiritual world in the healthy, normal state of consciousness.—All these things are signs of the task and of the value to be attached to the task of the spiritual-scientific Movement.
53. Esoteric Development: The Great Initiates 16 Mar 1905, Berlin
Translated by Gertrude Teutsch, Olin D. Wannamaker, Diane Tatum, Alice Wuslin

This smaller aura is the outer auric expression of the self-consciousness. And the more a man has developed this self-consciousness through his thought and through his work, the more this smaller aura spreads itself over the other, so that often in a short time both become totally different.
Manas is nothing other than that which has been worked into the body by the self-consciousness. The etheric body in its present form is deprived of any influence of the self-consciousness. We can indirectly influence our growth and nourishment, but not in the same way as we cause our wishes, our thoughts and ideas to proceed from self-consciousness. We cannot ourselves influence our nourishment, digestion, and growth. In men, these are without connection to the self-consciousness.
72. The Science of the Supersensible and Moral-Social Ideas 24 Nov 1917, Basel

Spiritual science finds out for itself with its means that we can have our ego-consciousness only because we experience the sleep and the wake consciousness alternating in such a way as we experience the sleep as human beings.
The beholding consciousness just disintegrates into the Imaginative consciousness that is the lowest level, the Inspired consciousness, a higher level, and the Intuitive consciousness, the highest level.
That which humanity dreams in history and in the social life can be only consciously recognised with the Imaginative, Inspired, and Intuitive consciousness. In this area is no transition from the instinctive consciousness via the scientific one to the Imaginative consciousness.
174b. The Spiritual Background of Human History: Sixth Lecture 24 Nov 1915, Stuttgart

Laboratories will have to be set up that work with the changing seasons and that take into account the constellation of the stars in the same way that the constellation of the stars is taken into account in nature.
And when we begin to sense what we can extend our consciousness to, how wide the horizon of the riddles of the world is, we will take care not to fall for the proud thought: O man, how you are actually a summary of the whole cosmos!
On the other hand, the other thought will be close to us: How little we know in our consciousness of what is knowable! — Infinity is necessary to put together the human being; but we have never gone further than knowing a very small piece of it.
4. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1963): Thinking in the Service of Understanding the World
Translated by Rita Stebbing

[ 30 ] I have so far spoken of thinking without considering its vehicle, man's consciousness. Most present-day philosophers would object: Before there can be thinking, there must be consciousness. Therefore, one should begin, not from thinking, but from consciousness. No thinking can exist without consciousness. To them I must reply: If I want to have an explanation of what relation exists between thinking and consciousness, I must think about it.
To this could be said: When the philosopher wants to understand consciousness he makes use of thinking, and to that extent presupposes it, but in the ordinary course of life thinking does arise within consciousness and, therefore, presupposes this.
78. Fruits of Anthroposophy: Lecture VIII 06 Sep 1921, Stuttgart
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

It is a question of developing these research tools in spiritual science in such a way that we take our starting point from something which is already present in our ordinary consciousness, in our everyday consciousness, in the consciousness on which ordinary science is based. We must, however, find the right way of rising to this ordinary consciousness with its potential for genuine ideas free from sensuality, ideas the mind is able to grasp.
As a result, human consciousness gains a new kind of insight into the world. Let me first of all briefly describe two of the life fruits arising out of this very expansion of consciousness, out of its intensification.
When the need arose to progress from instinctive to clear consciousness in this field, attempts were made to do this from the point of view which has come to be the scientific way of thinking over the last centuries.

Results 191 through 200 of 262

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