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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4881 through 4890 of 6551

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178. Geographic Medicine: Knowledge of the Supersensible and Riddles of the Human Soul 15 Nov 1917, St. Gallen
Translated by Alice Wuslin

These footprints are found by someone else, who then wishes to explain them. How does he do this? He assumes that underneath in the earth all kinds of forces are surging up and down, and because they surge in this way they produce these footprints.
It is true that this is compensated for, but the compensation is such that in the end spontaneous death is evoked. We must understand death as a force working in the organism, just as we understand the life forces. Look today at natural science, so thoroughly justified in its own sphere, and you will find that it looks only for the constructive forces; what is destructive eludes it.
One needs, however, to remove all prejudices that place themselves before the soul if one wishes to understand what spiritual science intends to say out of such a Goethean attitude. I wished to offer today only a few impulses to stimulate you further.
178. Geographic Medicine: The Mystery of the Double: Geographic Medicine 16 Nov 1917, St. Gallen
Translated by Alice Wuslin

An individual will not have sufficient concepts to understand this life on looking back at it if he cannot shed light on a being that takes over a portion of our life.
And only when the materialistic period began was America discovered again to the West, as is related today. From the East, America was discovered under the influence of the greed for gold, under the influence of purely materialistic culture, which simply must be taken into account in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and to which man has to find a suitable relationship.
They had to create a ground for their activity through the barrier they had erected. Such things must be understood. Spiritual science alone will create real historical understanding. But you see prejudice upon prejudice will naturally pile up.
178. The Wrong and Right Use of Esoteric Knowledge: Lecture I 18 Nov 1917, Dornach
Translated by Charles Davy

But knowledge of these spiritual beings, who live outside our consciousness under conditions different from ours, but have an enduring relationship with human beings and can lay hold of a person's thinking, feeling and willing—this knowledge has always been there.
Nothing less than that, you see, is the plan of certain brotherhoods. And nobody will understand these matters clearly unless he keeps the dust out of his eyes and refuses to be put off by suggestions that either such brotherhoods do not exist or that their activities are harmless.
They were in a certain way under the influence of the initiate-knowledge that in the fifteenth century—in 1413, as you know—the fifth post-Atlantean epoch was to begin.
178. The Wrong and Right Use of Esoteric Knowledge: Lecture II 19 Nov 1917, Dornach
Translated by Charles Davy

This applies also to the things which can in a certain sense be directed and guided only from the spiritual world. We shall understand one another better if we go into details. During the fourth post-Atlantean epoch it was still necessary to consider other things, not only the spoken word.
Ireland did not belong in the same sense to the rest of the earth, for Paradise, before Lucifer entered it, had created an image of itself on earth, and that image became Ireland. Let us understand this clearly. Ireland is that piece of the earth which has no share in Lucifer, no connection with Lucifer.
So far we have not gone beyond the application of faulty scientific ideas to human life; but the underlying impulse remains. The next step will be to make similar use of the occult truths which will be disclosed in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.
178. The Wrong and Right Use of Esoteric Knowledge: Lecture III 25 Nov 1917, Dornach
Translated by Charles Davy

(Not translated into English.)] I said that the kind of learning which under the name of philosophy occupies itself with such questions as that of immortality is a starveling, under-nourished kind of learning.
This is linked up with the egotistic use of the mystery of birth, and here, real cosmic understanding is sought. All such understanding has been replaced for modern men by a purely earthly understanding.
From this side also will be spread the idea that man cannot be made good by learning all sorts of ethical principles, but by ingesting copper, for example, under a certain constellation, and arsenic under another. You can well imagine how ideas of this kind can be used by egotistic groups for enhancing their own power.
178. Behind the Scenes of External Happenings: Lecture I 06 Nov 1917, Zurich
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield

Every such period contains something which mankind is obliged to undergo, something which may cause either happiness or unhappiness, which has to be realised and understood, which is the source of impulses of will leading to deeds, and so forth.
This is a very mysterious matter and can only be understood by scrutinising what, exactly, it was proposed to prevent, against what, exactly, these defence measures were taken.
The matter becomes comprehensible only when we take into consideration the fact that all these attempts by means of assassinations of which I have spoken up to now, were amateurishly directed, were not under “expert” guidance. They were attempts made without thorough knowledge of the occult connections; they were defence measures born of fear, and they were not under united leadership.
178. Behind the Scenes of External Happenings: Lecture II 13 Nov 1917, Zurich
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield

Although in the intervening period, man's life of soul has undergone very great changes indeed, it cannot be said that equal changes have taken place so far as the external, physical organism is concerned.
That, after all, is why people simply did not listen when it was said that momentous, incisive thoughts and undertakings are called for by men if the world is to be lifted out of its present pitiable state—and that such thoughts and undertakings must be born from spiritual knowledge, real spiritual knowledge.
And little by little the right way is found when Spiritual Science is our guide to knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world. Thereby, too, the right relationship with the spiritual world is established.
179. Historical Necessity and Freewill: Lecture I 02 Dec 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

In order to understand the world, it is very important to know that this boundary-line between the physical world and the spiritual world can be found in man himself.
We must learn to know them within their mutual limits, if we are to understand them. If we wish to understand such an event as the present war, which is so complicated and which unquestionably cannot be grasped in its details from the physical plane, we must—as people say—trace it back to its sources.
Because we understand something in its interrelationships, this does not also establish the fact that the event had to take place, that it could not have been omitted.
179. Historical Necessity and Freewill: Lecture II 09 Dec 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

He dreams, while he inwardly experiences, history. Thus the life of feeling lies quite underneath the threshold of the real, waking consciousness. In this soul relationship also the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious life cuts right across the middle of the human being.
And in these considerations we shall have to try to understand this question also. In the first place, however, we must perceive how this comprehension of the inner side of the animal life really takes place.
But what do we do in reality when we place at the service of mechanical art that which we perceive through our senses and combine through our understanding? We continually carry death into life. Even a Raphael painting cannot come into being unless death is carried into life.
179. Historical Necessity and Freewill: Lecture III 10 Dec 1917, Dornach
Translator Unknown

When you read to a so-called living person, you know that he understands what you read to him, in the sense in which we speak of human understanding; but the departed one lives in the contents, the departed one lives in each word that you read to him.
We cannot understand what takes place between man and man unless we consider the kingdom of the Spirit. Very abstract are man's thoughts concerning that which is social, ethical-moral and historical.
This cause has nothing whatever to do with the effect. Ponder this matter and try to understand what is really contained in all this talk of cause and effect. The so-called cause need not have anything to do with the effect.

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