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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4551 through 4560 of 6549

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194. The Mysteries of Light, of Space, and of the Earth: The Development of Architecture 13 Dec 1919, Dornach
Translated by Frances E. Dawson

Anyone who has the feeling upon entering a Gothic cathedral that in this cathedral he has before him something completed, something finished, does not understand the forms of Gothic architecture; just as anyone fails to understand the forms of the Greek temple who can regard it as if it contained no statue of a god. A Greek temple with-out the image of a god—we need only to imagine that it is there, but it must be imagined in order to understand the form—a Greek temple without the statue of a god is an impossibility to the understanding which comes through feeling.
For this reason it is particularly important for the people of modern times to understand what may be called seeking balance between opposite poles. The one wishes to soar beyond the head, as it were.
194. The Mysteries of Light, of Space, and of the Earth: Historical Occurrences of the Last Century 14 Dec 1919, Dornach
Translated by Frances E. Dawson

With the very inner being with which we think we will at the same time. It is principally thinking and has an undertone of willing; but in the same way, our willing has an undertone of thinking. We have in fact two different things in us: something which is chiefly thinking but has an undertone of willing; and something which is chiefly willing but has an undertone of thinking (see Diagram No.
Those forces, for example, existing in the willing which has an undertone of thinking were pre-eminently developed in the ancient Hebraic culture; and those forces of the human soul-being which are based essentially in the thinking which has an undertone of willing were developed in what is called the ancient pagan culture.
That is to say, in our head we are perpetually dying; and the undertone of willing, which is a quality of our thinking, lies in our head; but this undertone of willing is a continuous stimulus, a constant impulse to dying, to the overcoming of matter.
194. The Mysteries of Light, of Space, and of the Earth: The Old Mysteries of Light, Space, and Earth 15 Dec 1919, Dornach
Translated by Frances E. Dawson

He has quite definite socialistically-formulated ideals; but what kind of fundamental concepts underlie these ideals? His fundamental concept is that what satisfies him must satisfy everyone everywhere, and must possess absolute validity for all future time.
That is what our spiritual life has really become. Under its influence the social chaos of our time has developed, because the spiritual life that is so diluted and abstract has lost all impulsive force.
There are two things which the cultural history of civilization will doubtless find it difficult to understand. One I have often characterized in the words of Herman Grimm—the Kant-Laplace theory, in which many people still believe.
194. Elemental Beings and Human Destinies 06 Dec 1919, Dornach
Translated by Charles Davy

These are of course crude expressions that are only roughly true. Under the name of limbs, for example, we have to include a good part of what is contained in the trunk.
For the experiences do not come back unchanged; they have undergone a very great change in the meantime. Let me now draw your attention to a particular fact.
If we look at the accustomed treatment of history, we shall see that it has not yet reached an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just recall the history of the world as it is usually set before us.
194. The Michael Revelation 07 Dec 1919, Dornach

But modern chemists and physicists will not really understand the things written in such books, for the simple reason that they believe that these terms refer to external processes.
The fact that you have to take in food has in reality no more significance for your body, than the ground for your walking; if you had no ground under your feet you could not walk, but you, as human beings have nothing to do with the ground; it is only there to support you.
They must first see we have to do with something which concerns the World, a cosmic affair, then they will understand the sense of our movement. Only he can be a real bearer of this World-View, who in this way not only realises its meaning but can make it the innermost impulse of his own will.
195. The Cosmic New Year: The Three Streams in the Life of Civilization 21 Dec 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Harry Collison

But not only are human beings today so far advanced that with their healthy human understanding they can comprehend everything related by those who know the life in the super-sensible, but this knowledge of the super-sensible, this receptivity towards the science of the super-sensible, is an absolute, an unconditional, necessity for the healthy human understanding of the present age.
Such philosophers, such students of natural science as Newton, Darwin, Hume, Mill, Spencer, can only be understood if we see how they developed out of the Economic life, how they endeavoured to take an upward path. Mill, for example, as a national economist, can only be understood if we understand the economic conditions surrounding him. We can only understand the English philosophers if we clearly grasp the economic basis of their environment.
195. The Cosmic New Year: The Michael Path to Christ: A Christmas Lecture 25 Dec 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Harry Collison

We must look into these things if in a deeper sense we will to understand the original causes of the downfall in contemporary events, and in the life of mankind within these events.
In the art, the philosophy, and the statesmanship of Greece, much was still active which had proceeded from this Luciferic incarnation thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha. We must endeavour clearly to understand, that that which today we call human understanding is always, so long as we have not spiritualized it, a gift of that Lucifer.
He wanted to put a great deal into it, and could never finish it, because he was always making a fresh attempt to paint the figure of Judas in the right way. Now under the State organization of Milan, the abbot of the monastery for which the picture was being painted was his immediate employer.
195. The Cosmic New Year: The Mystery of the Human Will 28 Dec 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Harry Collison

It is quite wrong to think as is so often done that we should come to an understanding with such people as those of whom I have spoken. It is foolish to believe we can come to an understanding with such people for they do not desire it.
We must not ever be under the illusion that we can come to an understanding with this one or that one, who does not wish in any way to come to an understanding with us.
This seems to me especially the outcome of an understanding of what is bound up with the evolution of Mankind.
195. The Cosmic New Year: The Breaking-in of Spiritual Revelations Since the Last Third of the Nineteenth Century 31 Dec 1919, Stuttgart
Translated by Harry Collison

In olden times, man had clairvoyant revelations and did not understand them. Today man must first understand, must exert to the utmost his intellectual power, must exert to the utmost his reason.
This is certainly something that most people today wish to avoid, viz., to make use of their healthy human reason in order to understand Spiritual Science. Were it possible to avoid the use of man's reason, it would also be possible to avoid altogether the entrance of spiritual revelations into our earthly world.
As long as questions of this kind are not considered with due earnestness, we have not arrived at the right understanding of the Cosmic New Year's Eve. At the present moment, it is essential to reach this right understanding.
195. The Cosmic New Year: The Dogma of Revelation and the Dogma of Experience 01 Jan 1920, Stuttgart
Translated by Harry Collison

An open mind for that striving towards the loftiest heights of the world of thought, an understanding for that soaring of the spirit which in the realms of science went parallel with our classic period of culture—this is lacking now.
We ought to feel that we must say: “We have forsaken and trodden under foot that which in the age of Schiller and of Goethe was created within the Spiritual life of Germany.
Quite a simple operation might have put it right again, but the doctors found he was so undernourished that the injured parts would not heal. So this man, who could look so deeply into the events of his day, died owing to a slight accident.

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