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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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21. The Case for Anthroposophy: Reply to a Favourite Objection
Translated by Owen Barfield

[ 1 ] There is one objection often brought against anthroposophy, which is no less understandable than it is impermissible; understandable against the psychological background of those who advance it and impermissible because it traverses the whole spirit of anthroposophical research.
But anyone who has really understood anthroposophy will have sufficient insight to realise that an experiment engineered on these lines is about as apt a way of getting results through genuinely spiritual intuition as stopping the clock is of telling the time. The preliminaries leading up to the conditions under which spiritual observation is possible have to be furnished by the psyche itself and by the total disposition of the psyche.
21. The Case for Anthroposophy: Principles of Psychosomatic Physiology
Translated by Owen Barfield

What happens is that the nerve as carrier of the neural function implements an inner perception of the particular metabolic process that underlies the will—in exactly the same way that the sensory nerve implements perception of what is coming to pass within the sense-organ.
The content of this experience remains “unconscious” in the ordinary sense, because it consists of imaginations of a spiritual that existentially underpins the physical object. These imaginations add nothing to the representation except that its content exists.
21. The Case for Anthroposophy: The Real Basis of Intentional Relation
Translated by Owen Barfield

Not in anything he so receives in the process of perception, that the receiving can be understood through any physiological or psychological ideas that posit outer object on one side and immediate sensation on the other.
But that is not the case. In the hearing of human words and in the understanding of them as thoughts a threefold activity is involved, and each component of this threefold activity requires separate consideration, if we mean to conceptualise in a scientifically valid way.
They must be capable of distinguishing “awareness of words” from hearing, in one direction; and of distinguishing, in the other, this “awareness of words” from the “understanding of words” brought about by one’s own intellection; just as ordinary consciousness distinguishes between a tree and a lump of rock.
The Case for Anthroposophy: Introduction

It was by the rigorous exclusion from its field, under the name of “occult qualities”, of every element, whether spiritual or mental or called by any other name, which can only be conceived as non-material, and therefore non-measurable, that natural knowledge acquired a precision unknown before the revolution—because inherently impossible in terms of the old fusion; and, armed with that precision (entitling it to the name of “science”), went on to achieve its formidable technological victories.
It is the case that there is to be found in anthroposophy that immemorial understanding of tri-unity in man, in nature and in God, and of God and nature and man, which had long permeated the philosophy and religion of the East, before it continued to survive (often subterraneously) in the West in the doctrines of Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Hermetism, etc.; true that you will find it in Augustine, in pseudo-Dionysius, in Cusanus, in Bruno, in William Blake and a cloud of other witnesses, of whom Boehme is perhaps the outstanding representative.
The fond belief referred to is of course the assumption underlying the “favourite objection”, to which Section VI replies.2.
22. Goethe's Standard of the Soul: Goethe's Faust: A Picture of his Esoteric World Conception
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

He is desired to add to the amusements by charming Paris and Helena from the Underworld. This shows us that Faust had attained to that stage in his soul life where he under-stood the dying and becoming.”
—all heard them say; I'll cling to them and see what they are seeing, For they must understand this earthly being, And I shall doubtless learn, in season. Where to betake me with the soundest reason.
These are they who darken and circumscribe man's existence. He passes through life under their escort, and at first he cannot exist without their guidance. Life alone can bring emancipation from them.
22. Goethe's Standard of the Soul: Goethe's Standard of the Soul, as Illustrated in Faust
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

He has, however, always failed to see Mephistopheles—in spite of his living dramatic qualities—as an unitary, inwardly uniform being. He fully understands why the commentators of Faust do not know how they should really interpret Mephistopheles. The idea has arisen that Mephistopheles is not a devil in the real sense, that he is only a servant of the Earth Spirit.
This objection must be tolerated for the sake of the necessity for understanding Goethe's personal relation-ship to his Faust poem. We need only be reminded of how Goethe complained to friends of the weakness of his creative power just at the time when he wanted to bring his “life-poem” to an end.
The forces of knowledge, of cognition, which become active to the degree in which the impulses appear in them which finally bring about death, underlie the Ahrimanic illusion. The impulses of Will and of reeling work in opposition to these forces.
22. Goethe's Standard of the Soul: Goethe's Standard of the Soul, as Illustrated in his Fairy Story of “The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.”
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

These thoughts gave birth to the composition that has been interpreted in so many different ways,—namely the enigmatical fairy tale at the end of the narrative which appeared in Die Horen under the title of Conversations of German Emigrants. The fairy tale appeared in this paper in the year 1795.
We must look for the embryonic thought underlying the fairy tale in the Conversations of which it formed the conclusion. In the Conversations Goethe tells of the escape of a certain family from regions devastated by war.
This Essay merely indicates the path leading to the realm where Goethe's imagination wove the fabric of the fairy tale. Living understanding of all the other details can be developed by those who realise the fairy tale to be a picture of man's soul life as it strives towards the supersensible world.
Goethe's Standard of the Soul: The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily

Neither had any idea of the change which the Snake had undergone; for it was indeed the Snake, whose custom it was at mid-day to arch her form across the stream, and assume the appearance of a beautiful bridge, which travellers crossed in silent reverence.
Scarcely was the wonder at this circumstance appeased, than the change which the Snake had undergone excited attention. Her beautiful and slender form was changed into myriads of precious stones.
The Old Man continued to support the beautiful Lily, and whispered, “We are now under the river, and shall soon reach the goal.” Presently they thought the motion ceased, but they were deceived, for the temple still moved onwards.
23. The Threefold Social Order: Nature of the Social Question In the Life of Modern Man
Translated by Frederick C. Heckel

The fact is that, although the demands are economic, the underlying impulses are of a purely human character. One must arrive at the cause of these impulses if one would understand the true form of the social question.
This light comes from the different fact that his class consciousness has been filled with a definite kind of thought, shaped at the machine under the influence of the capitalist economy. Many people may look at the stress laid on this factor as a mere dialectic play upon terms, but anyone who wants to understand the working-class movement must start by knowing how the worker thinks.
The path has been blocked by the social system that has arisen, under the influence of the leading classes, with the new form of industrial economy. The strength to open it must be achieved.
23. The Threefold Social Order: Meeting Social Needs
Translated by Frederick C. Heckel

The position that labor has come to occupy in the social order under the capitalistic form of economy is such that it is purchased by the employer (from the employed) as a commodity.
Science has received its whole mold and form from its being under state management in recent centuries, and with it all that part of the spiritual life that it affects.
Anyone who cannot find what he requires through the recompense he gets under the spiritual organization, will have to go over to one of the other fields, either the political state or the economic life.

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