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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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13. Occult Science - An Outline: Man and the Evolution of the World
Translated by George Adams, Mary Adams

Yet it is there. It differs from day-consciousness in kind as well as in degree. Our present-day plants possess this “dreamless sleep” consciousness.
Thus did the ancestor of man live on the Moon in alternating states of consciousness—now duller, now clearer; and the alternation was accompanied by a changing and renewal of his being in its material aspect.
The picture-consciousness was not, indeed, as bright as waking consciousness today, neither was the other state of consciousness as dull as our dreamless sleep.
84. What is the Purpose of Anthroposophy and the Goetheanum?: What was the Purpose of the Goetheanum? 09 Apr 1923, Basel
Translator Unknown

Let us think first of the strange world which each of you knows as the other side of human existence, as it were, the other side of human consciousness—let us think of the dream-world. Each of you can remember the variegated, diverse, colorful pictures that appear out of the dark depths of sleep.
There is no knowledge whatever of this inner silence in the consciousness of the ordinary life. Of the two things needed by the spiritual researcher who wants to make research in the anthroposophical way, the first is the strengthened conceptual life, the strengthened thought-life, by means of which he comes to self-knowledge in the way indicated; the other is that he must cultivate a completely empty consciousness; in which all the thinking, feeling and willing, otherwise in the soul, is silenced—but silenced only after this soul-activity has been enhanced to the highest degree.
There are various methods by which such experience can really be brought into the ordinary consciousness, so that it can be put into words. It is my custom, with pencil in hand, to write down, to formulate, either in words or in some kind of signs, all that comes to me from the spiritual world.
70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: Why do you Call the People of Schiller and Fichte “Barbarians”? 11 Mar 1915, Nuremberg

We are told how Schiller, in these last hours, with his body already completely subject to death, with a yellowed face, with extinct eyes, still strong in spirit in these moments, how he had his last, his youngest child come to him in these last hours, how he looked the child long in the eye and then sent thoughts out of these eyes, one would like to say into the eyes.
Then he handed the child back, turned away and looked at the wall again. Do we not feel, my dear audience, as if the whole German nation, the soul of the whole German nation, could recognize itself in this child?
We see from this, my dear attendees, that Fichte himself uses the image that we use today from a spiritual scientific consciousness. Fichte uses it from what he feels as the depth of the German spirit weaving within him and what he wanted to present to his people at the time.
53. What Does Modern Man Find in Theosophy? 29 Sep 1904, Berlin

The human beings have formed wrong concepts about anything because the thinking is basically different from that which one thought centuries ago. However, the consciousness that the human actions work on all human beings and all times had just got lost to those who were the bearers of education in the last centuries and the most significant people in the 19th century.
We see the climate and also the earth's surface gradually changing by such influence. And now the geologists say: as well as the earth is today changed, it was also changed in former ages; and thus one also understands how bit by bit the earth has formed.
If we look for an explanation, we find that the human being with his mental qualities is an orphan child of sorts. Indeed, science has found enthusiastic words how miraculous the forces are which steer the stars how miraculous the forces are which have developed life up to the human being.
272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: The Mood of Whitsun: Faust's Initiation with the Spirits of the Earth 22 May 1915, Dornach

Now we must realize that for centuries until our time, a part of humanity has become aware that the Christ Impulse is connected with earthly existence. Something has changed in the collective consciousness of those human beings who have felt and sensed something of the Christ Impulse. Something has changed in the overall consciousness of these people.
I think it is something extraordinarily important for the human soul to feel how spiritual science has the task of really bringing something new into human consciousness, something so new that we ourselves may measure it against such great creations of humanity as the Michelangelesque Christ of the “Last Judgment”.
But how wonderful it is to benefit from this storm, The colorful arch of changing duration arches... - which reflects in seven colors what is in unity in the sun.
172. The Karma of Vocation: Lecture X 27 Nov 1916, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker, Gilbert Church, Peter Mollenhauer

Humanity will be convinced that they are being driven out when what is unholy service today becomes holy; that is, permeated with the Christ consciousness. In other words, this means that we must change to a sacramentalism in which man's deeds are imbued by the consciousness that the Christ stands behind him everywhere.
So long as we do not drive out the demons through what lives in our souls by changing external mechanical actions into holy actions, we will continue to crucify Christ. It is from this point that our education to a true Christianity must begin.
Thus we will have the right reverence before the growing human being and can then direct the entire education and especially the teaching of the child in this spirit so that we bring in this teaching a sacramentalism to fruition. We can achieve the same end when we not only look upon educating and teaching the child as a divine service, but also make it such a divine service.
70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Rejuvenating Power of the German National Soul 06 Mar 1915, Leipzig

We experience with the description of the young Voß, how Schiller can hardly look out of his eyes, which always looked so benevolent, so loving, so spirited. He has his youngest child brought to him. Voß describes how his eyes, from which on one side death, but also still the mighty soul of fire, how his eyes look at the child. And we can believe that Voß is right when he says in his description that something like the thought spoke from these eyes: “You, my child, I have to leave you so small, I should have been a father to you in so many ways.” Then the dying Schiller handed the child back and turned away, towards the wall.
They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises [by one step] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively survey the immense ring that connects the world of appearances to our higher worlds.
70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The “Barbarians” of Schiller and Fichte 01 Dec 1914, Munich

Then we accompany him into the death chamber, see how this spirit, in the hour of death, is directed towards the highest things, see how he has his youngest child brought to him, how he takes it and looks deeply into its eyes, how he gives it back and turns away. We can guess, as the younger Voß suggests, what thoughts may have crossed his mind: how much he, as a father, could and should have been for this child. And it is truly not a sentimental feeling when one says: this looking into the eyes of the child, one feels it as a symbolic looking into the eyes of the German people.
[They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises by one level] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively circumvent the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our [higher] worlds.
142. The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul: Lecture IV 31 Dec 1912, Cologne
Translated by Lisa D. Monges, Doris M. Bugbey

Such a one is something new, something miraculous. Hence the legend relates how the child Krishna, even at his birth, was surrounded by miracles, and that Kansa, the brother of his mother, wished to take the life of the child. In the uncle of the child Krishna we see the continuance of the old, and Krishna has to defend himself against him; for Krishna had to bring in the new, that which kills the third epoch and does away with the old conditions for the external evolution of mankind.
They are that which is in a constant state of changing form. The soul in its ordinary life lives in a state of entanglement, in Prakriti, In Yoga it frees itself from that which envelopes it, it overcomes that in which it is enwrapped, and enters the spiritual sphere, when it is quite free from its coverings.
180. Ancient Myths: Their Meaning and Connection with Evolution: Man Is the Solution of the Riddle 13 Jan 1918, Dornach
Translated by Mabel Cotterell

One who observes children in their development will perhaps know that in the very early days it can often be asked—whom does the child really resemble? And the likeness often only comes out strongly in later childhood—some at least of you will have already noticed that.
That present-day humanity has come to such calamities is connected with the fact that it has lost the secret of changing head-life into heart-life. We have hardly any real heart-life. What people generally speak of is the life of instincts and desires, merely that, not the spiritual element of which we have spoken.
Only an atavistic remainder is still there. Everyone knows that when he observes a child's head (a really young child's head) there is still one place that is soft. This is the last relic of that openness to the cosmos, where in ancient times cosmic forces worked in a certain way into the head and gave man cosmic wisdom.

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