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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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205. Humanity, World Soul and World Spirit I: Eleventh Lecture 15 Jul 1921, Dornach

That is the present, but it grows out of the past. And if you think through this, then underneath it you do not have an atomistic present, but in reality you have the past as related to what comes from you yourself from the past.
And that is the great mistake that is made, that one understands this dualism as if Ormuzd were only the good God and his opponent Ahriman the evil God. The relationship is rather like that of Lucifer to Ahriman.
For later times have committed the strange act of disregarding the Trinity; that is, to understand the upper gods, who are in Asgard, and the lower gods, the giants, who are in the Ahrimanic realm, as the All, and to understand the upper, the Luciferic ones, as the good gods and the others as the evil gods.
205. Humanity, World Soul and World Spirit I: Twelfth Lecture 16 Jul 1921, Dornach

So that we can also say about the bird: What the bird receives as an inheritance from the egg is under the influence of the life forces, the etheric forces, throughout its life. And what it acquires as its plumage is under the influence of the physical forces (arrows) throughout its life.
I already tried it in 1911 in my lecture at the philosophers' congress in Bologna. But to this day no one has understood this lecture. I tried to show what the ego actually is. This I actually lies in every perception, it actually lies in everything that makes an impression on us.
On the one hand, we live in the chicken egg, which is closed off from the world by its shell, in the Luciferic; we experience with our ego the perception and participation in our movements in that which is set in the body of the bird in the feathers and what flutters around in the butterflies and in the insects in general. Yes, anyone who understands the various wonderful shades of the bird world also understands something of the nature of the human soul in its relationship to the world.
205. Humanity, World Soul and World Spirit I: Thirteenth Lecture 17 Jul 1921, Dornach

Above all, it is only through this that modern materialism has become possible, which fills humanity with the awareness that there are contradictions all around us that are being investigated by today's conventional science and from which the universe will gradually be able to be understood. A simple consideration can teach that in this way an understanding of the universe can never be possible.
The spirit of the age essentially resides in the very outermost sphere of human perception. And if one understands the working of these archai, then one also understands how not only human forms change, but also how the spirits of the age change in the course of earthly existence.
You see, if you look into what actually constitutes the world, then you have to understand something like this. But you don't just have to fantasize in generalities like the mere nebulous mysticism of angels, archangels, archai and so on, and stick to theories.
206. Man as a Being of Sense and Perception: Lecture I 22 Jul 1921, Dornach
Translated by Dorothy Lenn

Of course, when we have perceived the thought of another, we ourselves must think in order to understand his thought, in order to bring it into connection with other thoughts which we ourselves have fostered.
There is an immense difference between the content of what we have in our soul-life through the ego-sense, word-sense and so on, and the experiences we have through taste, smell, movement, life-sense and so on. And you will understand this difference best if you make clear to yourselves how you receive what you experience in yourselves when you listen, let us say, to the words of another man, or to a musical sound.
When we picture the human being in this way, we have to understand that in the one direction we have obviously a life directed inwards, a sphere in which we live for ourselves, related to the outer world merely in perceiving it; in the other direction, of course, we also perceive—but we enter into the world by what we perceive.
206. Man as a Being of Sense and Perception: Lecture II 23 Jul 1921, Dornach
Translated by Dorothy Lenn

And what humanity developed in this respect was developed within the ancient eastern culture. And you understand that culture best when you understand it in the light of what I have just told you. But all this has, so to say, receded into the background of evolution.
And it does not help to introduce sympathy and antipathy, for then one does not reach objective knowledge. Anyone who wishes to understand what is contained in the Veda culture, the Yoga culture, must start from an understanding of these things, and must take this direction (see diagram, upper man).
And by having written such nonsense, the Professor undermines confidence in all his knowledge. To-day we must make it our bounden duty to treat such things with the utmost severity.
206. Man as a Being of Sense and Perception: Lecture III 24 Jul 1921, Dornach
Translated by Dorothy Lenn

Usually people completely fail to see how widespread to-day is the error in scientific method I have just described. The human faculty of memory must be understood entirely out of human nature itself. To do this one needs an opportunity of watching how the memory develops in the course of the development of the individual.
You have only to look at the human head-organisation with understanding to say why. You see, the head-organisation makes its appearance comparatively early in embryonal life, before the essentials of the rest of the organisation are added.
When you grasp such a thing as this, then you will of course see that one can really understand the structure of matter—particularly when it comes to organic life—only if one understands it in its spiritual formation.
206. Dual Forms of Cognition in the Middle Ages 05 Aug 1921, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Even if the human beings are no longer fully conscious of them, they nevertheless act under the influence of these habits. In the centuries which preceded the nineteenth century, one of these habits, that is to say, a habit which arose under the influence of Christian dogmatism, produced the tendency to use the intellectual faculties merely for an external observation through the senses.
[ 18 ] The dogmatic contents gradually paled under the influence of contents which were gained through a knowledge of the sensory world. This knowledge was acquiring a more and more positive character.
We grasp its historical evolution, not by opposing it, but by trying to understand what it lacked, indeed, but what it had to lack, owing to the fact that, during the time which immediately preceded it, the soul-spiritual element was sought in the wrong place.
206. The Remedy for Our Diseased Civilisation 06 Aug 1921, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Let us observe how the external facts of human evolution present themselves under the influence of the materialistic world-conception. This materialistic world-conception cannot be considered as if it had merely been the outcome of the arbitrary action of a certain number of leading personalities.
We might say: If a human being, who in the more recent course of time has undergone a training in knowledge, if such a human being observes the world, he will do it in such a way that he remains inside his own skin and observes what is round about him outside his skin.
In other words: If we allow things to take their course, in the manner in which they have taken their course under the influence of the world-conception which has arisen in the nineteenth century and in the form in which we can understand it, if we allow things to take this course, we shall face the war of all against all, at the end of the twentieth century.
206. The Development of the Child up to Puberty 07 Aug 1921, Dornach
Translated by Hanna von Maltitz

This is something important, the sharper the outlines of our concepts in daily life, the less these concepts are able to enter our sleep condition, understanding realities from there. As a result of this the child often in fact brings a particular knowledge of spiritual reality out of its sleeping condition.
Earlier the social affairs which needed to be organized on the earth round was not understood; before it had been acknowledged that human beings are connected with cosmic intentions, with cosmic entities.
Healing must come through the modern spirit of science—as you know, where it is entitled, it is also appreciated by spiritual science—because it wants to set itself up in those areas of which it understands nothing, making it sick.
206. Goethe and the Evolution of Consciousness 19 Aug 1921, Dornach
Translated by Harry Collison

They argue that in order to write history it is essential to take the present mental attitude as the starting-point; if one were obliged to look back to an age when human beings were quite differently constituted in their life of soul, it would be impossible to understand them. One would not understand how they spoke or what they did. Historical thought, therefore, could not comprise any such period.
Nor is it possible to understand Goethe's whole attitude to Faust until we realise the fundamental nature of the change that had taken place.
Such documents as exist are very scanty and are not really understood. Among these documents we have Iliad and the Odyssey but they, as a rule, are not considered from this point of view.

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