Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Search results 4471 through 4480 of 6551

˂ 1 ... 446 447 448 449 450 ... 656 ˃
173c. The Karma of Untruthfulness II: Lecture XXI 20 Jan 1917, Dornach
Translated by Johanna Collis

But, at the present stage of their evolution, human beings do not understand the strange language of dreams. Dream pictures remain incomprehensible, and this is quite natural.
An attitude appropriate for today is one that never accepts things which are given out by many secret societies, and which are not understood, for indeed a great deal that has not been understood is today both given out and accepted. Today it is appropriate to treat what these societies give out as something that is at most a failure to give the spoken word its true value, that is, something that uses words as mere concepts.
This points to something exceedingly important. When we understand how the living testaments of these societies—not written testaments left over for those still alive, but testaments which are forces going beyond death—when we understand how these work and are preserved, which is something that ought not to happen, then we understand something of the magical power wielded by such societies which often enables them to impress the stamp of truthfulness on to something untrue.
173c. The Karma of Untruthfulness II: Lecture XXII 21 Jan 1917, Dornach
Translated by Johanna Collis

In our present context it is particularly important to understand that in the world through which man passes between death and a new birth an evolution, a development is taking place just as much as is the case here on the physical plane.
They are beyond the door of the East. And in this connection the experiences we undergo now, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, in the sphere of development of materialism are very significant.
It is because human beings in this materialistic age—human beings in general, rather than those who understand these things—are too spiritual—paradoxical though this may sound. That is why they can be so easily approached by purely spiritual influences such as those of Lucifer and Ahriman.
162. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: Tree of Knowledge I 07 Aug 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

And suppose that here were a worm or some little creature, that lives and burrows under the earth and has its home under the earth and never comes above the surface. This little grub or caterpillar, or whatever it is, creeps about inside and learns by its creeping about to know the roots of these plants.
He would have to realize that what he himself underneath has had as perceptions of differences, is up above. It is just the same when one raises oneself from ordinary human sight to spiritual sight, for one notes how then something comes into the sense-world which cannot be perceived under ordinary circumstances.
Then it must also get accustomed to viewing things not merely under time-conditions, but under conditions, for which that which takes its course in time is nothing but an outer sign, like a letter of the alphabet.
162. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: Tree of Knowledge II 08 Aug 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

During the Saturn condition they were still lifeless germinal organisms, which then underwent changes and only through the various processes which have acted on man from the cosmos have become capable of perceptions.
And the true causes of the antipathy are hidden behind what the man alleges he has undergone. It is obvious that in face of such facts of the spiritual world, it can be asked: how does one protect oneself from such things?
We men as physically incarnated beings can only understand this through spiritual science. The question is how these thoughts work upon that which separated, upon what lies outside thought.
163. Chance, Necessity and Providence: Probability and Chance, Fritz Mauthner's Studies of Improbability 23 Aug 1915, Dornach
Translated by Marjorie Spock

You will find that what I am going to tell you today will make it easier to understand certain matters that will occupy us in the next lecture. I will be speaking then about the important concepts chance, necessity, and providence. And I want to begin today with an introduction that, though it has its difficulties, will nevertheless contribute something vital and significant, not only to our theoretical understanding, but to the feeling we will then be able to develop for the way to seek truth. I have often had occasion to mention the fact that there is a contemporary philosopher by the name of Fritz Mauthner who has written a Critique of Language.
163. Chance, Necessity and Providence: Consciousness in Sleeping and Waking States 27 Aug 1915, Dornach
Translated by Marjorie Spock

Just as in the earth's case the only thing that makes sense is to say that it undergoes an alternation between day and night because of its position in space, so human life undergoes an alternation between interest for the inner and interest for the outer scene.
What really matters is to note the salient facts in the case under study. We only know something about these higher beings if we are familiar with the state of consciousness in which the various hierarchies live and if we can describe it.
I'd like to show you at hand of an example that there are indeed individuals who possess understanding for such nuances of consciousness. Today is the 27th of August, Hegel's birthday, and tomorrow, the 28th, is Goethe's; they follow on one another's heels.
163. Chance, Necessity and Providence: Necessity and Chance in Historical Events 28 Aug 1915, Dornach
Translated by Marjorie Spock

And he believes that they can be answered only if he understands “productive powers and germs,” understands, in other words, how outer experience contains a hidden clue to the way the thread of necessity runs through everything that happens.
When we look at the phenomena surrounding us, we seek the spiritual life, the truly living life of the spirit that underlies them, whereas Hegel, since he could go no further, sought the invisible idea, the fabric of ideas, first the fabric of ideas in pure logic, then that behind nature, and finally that underlying everything that happens as a spiritual element.
Where, then, must we look for the facts underlying history? That is the question now confronting us. In the case of individual lives we have to look for the thoughts underlying gesture.
163. Chance, Necessity and Providence: Necessity as Past Subjectivity 29 Aug 1915, Dornach
Translated by Marjorie Spock

It may be that the falsity was inherent, or else became attached to the concept as language underwent changes over a period of time and did not need to wait for a scientifically and critically advanced generation to discover it.
You see that if we are really intent upon understanding life, we have to deal seriously and conscientiously with matters like these. We have to try very conscientiously indeed to develop our thinking, noting errors of thought where they occur, for they are intimately bound up with errors in the way our lives are lived.
Only if people bestir themselves to grasp that the events that took place in the ancient moon, sun, and Saturn periods are now reflected in us, and are merely reflections of those ancient events, will they come to understand necessity. And now think back to our discovery that our conceptual world is of moon origin.
163. Chance, Necessity and Providence: Necessity and Past, Chance and Present 30 Aug 1915, Dornach
Translated by Marjorie Spock

But they should not encounter the kind of aspirations brought in from the world we formerly lived in or be pursued according to our erstwhile habits. The spiritual movement should not be undermined by them. In most cases, spiritual movements have been undermined by people's failure to adapt their habitual ways to spiritual truths, instead of bringing their accustomed habits to the reception of those truths.
And we prepare ourselves to make the right kind of understanding ascent into higher worlds by taking in, in the form of sharply defined concepts, the world we live in.
We have two streams: our present life, which we think of as simply chance, and the reflected past or necessity flowing along underneath it. What is considered real from the ordinary physical standpoint can only be related to the past, to necessity, if reality is taken to mean conformity with what already exists.
163. Chance, Necessity and Providence: Imaginative Cognition Leaves Insights of Natural Science Behind 04 Sep 1915, Dornach
Translated by Marjorie Spock

Now in earlier lectures I've already shown that the spiritual energy underlying thinking changes when a clairvoyant seeker frees himself from the instrumentality of his physical body.
If you want to understand a watch, you must study the laws governing its mechanism, and it would be ridiculous to say, Ah ha!
We understand the mental state of gnomes, then, if we become cognizant of the state of consciousness involved in the relationship of physical knowledge to the world reflected in it.

Results 4471 through 4480 of 6551

˂ 1 ... 446 447 448 449 450 ... 656 ˃