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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4581 through 4590 of 6548

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197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture III 09 Mar 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

No one thinks that development should be such that the individual undergoes a complete change. Above all no one thinks that something objective should enter into the soul of that individual, something that was not there before.
The divine world was right among them, made absolute and visible under the conditions regularly created through the mystery cult. When such a ruler wanted something, decreed something, it was a god who wanted it.
The ideas used by people nowadays to fill their heads with illusions, wanting to understand history by merely going back as far as ancient Greece, are limited ideas. Yet it is only possible to understand the whole structure of ancient Egypt, for instance, if we know that the ancient gods still walked on earth.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture IV 13 Jun 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

They are the fountainhead of everything that usually comes under the heading of Jesuitism. Many people talk about Jesuitism and the like, but still large numbers of our fellow citizens are little inclined to pay proper attention to what is really going on.
Nothing goes more against the grain for instance with certain Catholic or Protestant groups today than that humankind should today gain true understanding of the Christ Mystery. It is not in their interest that the true Mystery of Christ comes to be known; all they want is to hold on to the old ideas.
Well, you see the kind of mentality one is dealing with. But do not underestimate it! You have to realize that it is going to be a hard fight, particularly in this direction.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture V 24 Jun 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

People of little understanding will say: ‘You are using analogy in applying the threefold order of the human body to the social organism’.
Now a realistic view is taken and it is realized that if the stomach is undermined in the human organism, the head will suffer. In the same way there can be no sound metabolism in the social organism and economic life must fall into decline if morality, religious life and intelligent thought are undermined in the social organism.
The other pole, the other extreme, of human understanding, must be there as well; it is the pole of human understanding where it is possible to enter into a human individual, to go deeply into the life impulses of another person, and so on.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture VI 25 Jul 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

Again and again the point has been made that when any work is undertaken or any proposal made in connection with the anthroposophical movement proper regard must be paid to the gravity of the present situation.
We are not merely producing logical definitions or correcting our views, but something is happening when human beings endeavour to gain inner experience of knowledge and look for the truth outside them, endeavouring also to let each enter into the other. This has to be understood in the present age. The present age must understand that human beings must hold the balance between the two extremes, between the ahrimanic and the luciferic poles.
The language of the earth and that of heaven are different, alas, and it is part of the tragedy of our age that people do not even want to understand the language of heaven. Since it has become customary to speak in the most earthly terms possible from the pulpit it is no longer possible for people to understand the language of heaven.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture VII 30 Jul 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

One fact is that it is impossible to imagine that matter, physical substance, can be found to the outer world of our human environment. This can be clearly understood on the basis of many different things that can be learned through spiritual science. Our eyes behold the outside world, our ears hear the outside world, and we come to understand nature in a way when we use the intellect to combine the things we see, hear and Perceive with the other senses.
What counts is that one really gets a clear understanding of the spiritual paths, using the whole human being in arriving at such understanding—which certainly can be achieved with healthy common sense nowadays—and not the human dwarf who tends to be the end product of the kind of educational establishments we have today.
It is therefore a question of having the will to understand anthroposophy; anthroposophy is intended to tear the element of spirit and soul away from the physical body.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture VIII 21 Sep 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

Initiation knowledge has to look far back into human evolution, however, if it is to help us understand why in the present age humankind has been taught that there is such a difference between knowledge and faith.
It has to be said that the individuals concerned were totally under the influence of luciferic powers. Luciferic powers were alive in them, luciferic powers that did not want human thinking, feeling and will activity to descend as far as the earth, as it were.
The idea that Rome might lead the way in conquering the supersensible sphere for humanity is the historical untruth of the present age. This must be clearly and firmly understood. It must also be understood that Protestantism as it has evolved out of Roman Catholicism in recent times contains much that is of Roman Catholic origin.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture IX 08 Nov 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

If you take a good look at oriental culture as it essentially is today you will find that the underlying impulse is still to focus attention on the divine human being. Echoes of this underlying trend are to be found even in Rabindranath Tagore's superficialities.
We must look to the East and look to the West and understand what is in progress there. It has to be clearly understood that Western culture is in its initial stages.
The West understands earthly things only, the East has no understanding of them. Because of this, the heavenly element has grown completely senile.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture X 14 Nov 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

So far a number of different approaches have been used to consider the effective forces in human evolution which we must know about if we want to arrive at a proper understanding of current events. We must above all understand where the root causes lie that have led to the disastrous situation we are facing today.
That had an effect on their conscious awareness; the soul came to an understanding with the phenomena Of nature, and the conscious mind could relate to those phenomena. Today's enlightened' minds consider it superstitious to look for spiritual Powers in natural phenomena.
People who are all the time merely looking to unearthly mystical heights for moral uplift will not understand this language. The Christ will however be speaking of the spirit even when He is speaking about everyday life.
197. Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: Lecture XI 22 Nov 1920, Stuttgart
Translator Unknown

Goethe's way was to create a picture composed of twenty Imaginations. The two men understood each other in a way. What exactly was it that they had done? Schiller used a scientific approach in writing his letters on aesthetic education.
In the last three decades of the 19th century human relations grew impersonal, and they have remained impersonal under the strong materialism of the 20th century. The law will only come alive when human beings have the Christ spirit within them.
This will need powerful ideas and on the other hand also powerful Imaginations; a true spiritual understanding of the outer world must arise. To achieve this, we must fill ourselves with the Christ spirit.
198. Healing Factors for the Social Organism: Third Lecture 28 Mar 1920, Dornach

If we want to understand the human being in his relationship to the world, we must always bear in mind that the whole reality of the human being contains, on the one hand, everything that, as it were, shines forth from prenatal life, that is, the life that the human being has led between the last death and this birth in the supersensible worlds.
He will look more and more with this organization at the world that spreads around him, will try to understand this world, but he will also, if he does not want to lose the consciousness of his human dignity, have to look within, at what arises as newly born will and what holds up the moral ideals to him, what holds up the ideals of his actions, of his deeds, to him.
If he does not broaden it, he narrows himself down to an understanding of the world that can only be exhausted in that which cannot go beyond the dualism between the moral conception of the world and the conception of the world in terms of natural law.

Results 4581 through 4590 of 6548

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