Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Search results 431 through 440 of 1752

˂ 1 ... 42 43 44 45 46 ... 176 ˃
32. Collected Essays on Literature 1884-1902: Marie Eugenie delle Grazie 22 Sep 1899,

Nature is voluptuous and demonic at the same time: it wants to satisfy itself by giving birth to people, and it tricks the poor creatures into believing in the dream and foam of ideals so that they are distracted from the true content of existence. What a proud, profoundly comfortable nature has to suffer from such sentiments can be seen in delle Grazie's poetry.
Robespierre is the hero in whose soul lives everything that humanity has always called idealism. He ends tragically because the great dream of the ideals of humanity that he dreams must necessarily ally itself with the mean aspirations of lower natures.
No, know: here I wander to be happy And quietly dream of my paradise: The paradise of unmoved peace. But a few steps further I dwell, And, as you see, not lonely: hut after hut Surrounds the cemetery, and in each one throbs- What did you call it?
170. The Riddle of Humanity: Lecture V 06 Aug 1916, Dornach
Translated by John F. Logan

he would be following a path of illusion if he only followed—the path of dreams; in so far as he enters the sphere of truth, the surrounding spiritual world frees his inner being from false paths.
The following literary passage expresses beautifully how the human depths can appear to a man from out the surging dreams of his soul life. One must imagine someone who has laid himself down to rest after the toils and the burdens of the day. But as he rests, out of the darkness and shadow, the human depths rise up before his soul in powerful dreams. Here is how a Polish poet once described it: And in the secret magic of the night, There, before my palace, My dreams took hold of the ghostly mists and built Unimaginable blossoms with dead eyes That formed a balefully grinning Medusa In the moonlight drenched with dew, And she waxed monstrous.
301. The Renewal of Education: Children's Play 10 May 1920, Basel
Translated by Ruth Pusch, Gertrude Teutsch

In just the same way that children put things together in play—whatever those might be—not with external things but with thoughts, we put pictures together in dreams. This may not be true of all dreams, but it is certainly so in a very large class of them. In dreaming, we remain in a certain sense children throughout our entire lives. Nevertheless we can only achieve a genuine understanding if we do not simply dwell upon this comparison of play with dreams. Instead we should also ask when in the life of the human being something occurs that allows those forces that are developed in early children’s play until the change of teeth, which can be fruitful for the entirety of external human life.
It is active in play in much the same way that dreams are active throughout the child’s entire life. In children, however, this activity occurs not simply in dreams, it occurs also in play, which develops in external reality.
293. The Study of Man: Lecture VII 28 Aug 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Daphne Harwood, Helen Fox

For we do not only sleep in the night, we are continually asleep on the periphery, on the external surface of our body, and the reason why we as human beings do not entirely comprehend our sensations, is because in these regions where the sensations are to be found we are only dreaming in sleep, or sleeping in dreams. The psychologists have no notion that what prevents them from understanding the sensations is the same thing as prevents us from bringing our dreams into clear consciousness when we wake in the morning.
We have no idea that this sleeping extends much further, and that we are always sleeping on the surface of the body, although this sleeping is constantly being penetrated by dreams. These “dreams” are the sensations of the senses, before they are taken hold of by the intellect and by thinking-cognition.
Now we get some feeling of how significant this is: we are awake in a part of our being which in contrast to other living parts may be described as a hollow space, whilst at the external surface and in the inner sphere we are dreaming in sleep, and sleeping in dreams. We are only fully awake in a zone which lies between the outer and inner spheres. This is true in respect to space.
10. Initiation and Its Results (1909): The Dissociation of Human Personality During Initiation
Translated by Clifford Bax

On the following day he awoke, not at the call of his neighbor, but out of a dream. He heard six sharp rifle-reports, and with the sixth he was awake. His watch—equipped with no alarm—stood at six o'clock.
In reality, it was only just then six o'clock, for his watch, by some accident, had gained half an hour in the night. The dream which awakened him had timed itself to the erroneous watch. What was it, then, which happened here?
[ 3 ] That which is illustrated in such typical examples of dream—or sleep—life is repeatedly experienced by people. The soul lives an unintermittently in the higher worlds and is active within them.
209. Imaginative Cognition and Inspired Cognition 23 Dec 1921, Dornach
Translated by Violet E. Watkin

To the unprejudiced observer our feeling life shows affinity to dream-life; though dream-life runs on in pictures and the life of feeling in the way we all know. Yet we soon realise that, on the one hand, dream-life—which as we know conjures up in pictures, into everyday life, facts unknown to ordinary consciousness—can be judged only by our conceptual faculty of discrimination.
And the whole of our life of feeling runs its course just like a dream. Now what concerns us here is that, when taken as a whole, the facts I have just mentioned can be quite clear to our ordinary consciousness, although perhaps, when given an abstract interpretation certain points may not seem so at once.
32. Collected Essays on Literature 1884-1902: Ferdinand Freiligrath 16 Mar 1901,

The poet transports himself to Africa, America and Asia, and vividly describes what his dreams tell him about these parts of the world. In 1835, the world first became acquainted with what Freiligrath saw in his dreams, what he experienced in his innermost being during a strenuous, busy youth.
Treitschke even found the words: "When, years later, all his republican ideals lay shattered on the ground and the dream of his youth was fulfilled by monarchical powers, he cheered gratefully, without small-mindedness, at the new greatness of Germany, and his bright poet's greeting answered the trumpet of Gravelotte."
46. Posthumous Essays and Fragments 1879-1924: Preliminary Studies for On the Human Riddle

Enhanced consciousness is not developed from ordinary consciousness through bodily (physiological) processes, as ordinary waking consciousness develops from dream consciousness. The intensification is a completely soul-spiritual experience that cannot have anything to do with bodily processes. When awakening from dream into waking consciousness, one is dealing with a changing attitude of the body; when awakening from ordinary consciousness to spirit-perceiving consciousness, one is dealing with a changing attitude of spiritual-soul experiences.
The former does not reach the spirit because it loses itself in observing the senses; the latter does not enter into reality with its spiritual experience because it does not want to awaken from ordinary consciousness to the heightened consciousness meant here, but rather dampens ordinary consciousness, thereby falling into a dream-like recognition. She believes she is recognizing the spiritual by leaving the reality that is immediately present to her.
69d. Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science: The Mystery of Death 13 Mar 1913, Augsburg

What flows into the soul life is like images, a kind of dream image. But it is not important that you call it that, but that you learn to read in the world you are now entering.
It can only be said with a semblance of justification by contemporary dream researchers that one can have realities from the past in front of oneself and mistake them for new images.
There is much in life that hurts us, and we would spare ourselves this pain. So the spiritual researcher does not dream when he looks into the world before conception and sees that the human being has prepared this pain for himself, what is called, has made his own karma, that we have prepared this evil fate, the painful disappointments, ourselves.
97. The Christian Mystery (2000): The Three Aspects of the World 04 Dec 1906, Cologne
Translated by Anna R. Meuss

Human beings enter into this inner world of theirs in their dreams. They are then removed from the world perceived by the senses and given over to the chaotic whirl of the inner responses that arise in images before the mind's eye. Those dream images become more regular and meaningful as they are able to bring order into their inner responses.

Results 431 through 440 of 1752

˂ 1 ... 42 43 44 45 46 ... 176 ˃