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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4731 through 4740 of 6551

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202. The Search for the New Isis, Divine Sophia: Lecture IV 26 Dec 1920, Dornach
Translator Unknown

And in France, in the 18th century, we find efforts being made to understand the human being, to answer the question: What is the human being in reality? Efforts were made to understand man through the power of knowledge he himself manifests; and we find such a work as Man as Machine by De la Mettrie.
But in the modern striving for knowledge there is no real understanding of the human being. From science—the highest authority recognised today—no conscious understanding of the human being is to be gained.
They are all learned men and this particular one, because he does not understand Anthroposophy at all, finds in it something similar to ancient mythologies. You know that in Anthroposophy it is a question of a fully conscious understanding of the world, an understanding with a consciousness that otherwise occurs only in mathematics with its inner penetration of the realities, so that it is certainly not a matter of mythological poetry.
202. The Bridge Between the World Spirit and the Physical Body: Second Lecture 27 Nov 1920, Dornach

Thus that which I would call what is in man flows into what is social life; and one cannot really understand social life other than by realizing what flows from each individual human being into this social life.
202. The Bridge Between the World Spirit and the Physical Body: Third Lecture 28 Nov 1920, Dornach

I would like to say that these buzzwords of wisdom, beauty and strength have been merely parroted in certain secret societies, in freemason orders and so on, without further cultivation of inner understanding. If one would understand the matter inwardly, one would know that these are ancient traditions that must revive as imagination, as inspiration, as intuition.
By constructing them, he had placed his intellect, his scientific understanding, into the mechanisms. In a sense, reason had run away from his head and become the Horsepower Years in his environment.
They still think the way they did when there were only 6.7 million horsepower years in Germany! They do not understand that you have to think differently when 79 million horsepower years are working outside of humans!
202. The Bridge Between the World Spirit and the Physical Body: Fifth Lecture 05 Dec 1920, Dornach

Spiritual science must bring humanity back to a concrete understanding, to a realistic understanding of the world. But it is precisely such a realistic conception of the world that can give rise to inner reasons why such one-sidedness takes hold.
Through the developed knowledge in imagination, inspiration and intuition, the mental-physical power that underlies the head organization, which comes from previous incarnations, also becomes visible if we use this expression in a figurative sense.
The past is that which shines in the beauty of light, whereby light is set for everything that reveals itself, because, of course, what appears in tone, what appears in warmth, is meant here under the light. And so man can only understand himself if he regards himself as a future core, enveloped by what comes from the past, by the light aura of the thought.
202. The Bridge Between the World Spirit and the Physical Body: Sixth Lecture 10 Dec 1920, Dornach

They need only open my “Occult Science” and read the relevant pages to know that when we look back into the distant past, the human being as we understand him today did not yet exist. He was only a kind of sensory automaton, for example, during the Saturn period.
For those who prefer to remain in reality, it is enough if they can simply understand the cosmic contrast between light and gravity. And now, you see, what I am about to say concerns many things related to the human being.
Sometimes I go around like this and close here; but under certain conditions I don't go up to the top like that, but go around like this and then return again and close at the bottom.
202. The Shaping of the Human Form out of Cosmic and Earthly Forces 26 Nov 1920, Dornach
Translated by Charles Davy

Man is an expression of the whole Cosmos, and where there is the will to understand this configuration, it can be understood. In so far as man is formed out of cosmic mysteries, he is able to see into them, and can even perceive a certain connection with them in earthly life itself.
It is not true that the things we have touched upon today, and shall be going into further tomorrow and the day after, are beyond human understanding. Human beings can understand them, but they have to be investigated through Spiritual Science.
At the beginning of this lecture I told you how the head cannot be understood if its cosmic origin is not taken into account; nor can the limb-man be understood unless his earthly formation is considered.
202. Hegel, Schopenhauer, Thought, Will 04 Dec 1920, Dornach
Translated by Hanna von Maltitz

Hegel had to forever connect and convince everyone who didn't change towards understanding the reality of thought. For Schopenhauer these thoughts were nothing more than foam rising from the breaking of waves of cosmic will.
Both however, Schopenhauer as much as Hegel, felt a lack of what really constituted the understanding of mankind. Hegel lived in cosmic thought, and this was exactly that which made him so unpopular—because in daily life people are not going to soar up to cosmic thoughts.
You see, here the human being enters into the tangible. If you really want to understand the human being you enter into what Schopenhauer and Hegel approached so one-sidedly. From this you realise that philosophic elements, being combined on a higher level, need to be threefold, just as the human being is to be understood in the cosmos.
202. The Bridge Between Morality and Nature 11 Dec 1920, Dornach
Translated by Hanna von Maltitz

Without expanding one's manner of observation, without calling on the past in order to understand the human being, will bring one no further. This scheme for humanity's being is quite impossible.
To love could mean to be able to live, understood cosmically. Here we see how foregoing events without doubt may be grasped quite naturally: to be born and be incorporated as a human being, birth and death, can be understood by outer natural science merely as acceptable precursors, manifestations, revelations of love and freedom.
If one doesn't have the courage to see things in complete alertness then there can be no progress. It is understandable that many powers exist at present which not everyone wants thoroughly illuminated. It is unpleasant when it is pointed out how social science should be understood in harmony with people, but how it actually knows nothing about people, merely about private property and about economic freedom through economic machines.
202. Spiritual Science, History, Reincarnation, Culture, Examples 12 Dec 1920, Dornach
Translated by Hanna von Maltitz

It is finally also only an illusion to consider mankind or historical origins this way. It is argued that one would understand these things, but in fact they are not understood at all in reality. There is theorizing about this and that, what mankind is doing at present, how they live there, the affect of this or that inherited quality.
Such details must be taken further in order to gradually reach a total view. This may not at all be understood as when something previously stated in all truthfulness, even applied to several people, should now be corrected; so to add to this, the following must be said.
This was not the time of great blossoming of the oriental culture of nature, but it was the time when ideas and concepts were being created which would help understand the Mystery of Golgotha. I'm talking about souls who stood far from the Mystery of Golgotha but who had a particular culture of wisdom which could not be transplanted into the West, and from which the Mystery of Golgotha could be understood as coming out of Hellenism, out of the Roman culture.
202. The Souls Progress through Repeated Earth Lives 14 Dec 1920, Bern
Translated by Elly Havas

It can be understood only when we know whence come the souls who have united themselves with these inherited characteristics in order to bring about a reciprocal activity.
Whereas the fact is that the full reality can be understood, if we ask ourselves not only what blood flows in a person's veins, but whence comes the soul which only uses this blood.
Let us hope that we shall soon see each other again so that we can continue such studies, which can lead up to an understanding of the present and of the future, to an understanding of human nature and of the universe in so far as man is born out of it.

Results 4731 through 4740 of 6551

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