Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Search results 5121 through 5130 of 6548

˂ 1 ... 511 512 513 514 515 ... 655 ˃
159. The Mystery of Death: Overcoming Death through Knowledge 19 Jun 1915, Cologne
Translator Unknown

Just concerning such a consideration I have to stress repeatedly that the reasonable understanding of that which is given in spiritual science does not depend at all whether anybody himself beholds in the spiritual world.
If, however, the facts are given, everybody can understand them if he uses his unbiased healthy reason not clouded by prejudices of the external materialistic world.
They are stated to show that a clear thinking understanding the matters is something different than that which is asserted so often. In our time, the materialistic ways of thinking are exceptionally developed.
161. Meditation and Concentration: Three Kinds of Clairvoyance: Lecture I 27 Mar 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Over and over again it must be emphasised that spiritual science when given can really be understood. It cannot be emphasised too often that for the understanding of spiritual science there is no need of clairvoyance.  It goes without saying that to arrive at its results one has to be clairvoyant; but once these results are gained they can be understood without clairvoyance. What must precede actual vision is the understanding of spiritual science.
I particularly mentioned there that our thinking undergoes a transformation the moment we free ourselves—especially where our thoughts are concerned—from the physical instrument of the head.
161. Meditation and Concentration: Three Kinds of Clairvoyance: Lecture II 01 May 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Thereby we sense that what has here been called invisible spirit must be recognised as underlying the visible. Now, if what is external has consciousness we have to take for granted that there is consciousness also in what is within, and that what is within cannot be deemed unconscious.
Today we know—have known for some -time how to give an answer about the precise qualities of the invisible spirit underlying man. If we take, to begin with, what today is offered us by philosophy, we shall admit that at the basis of man, too, there lies an invisible spirit.
We must here ask: What is the reason for spiritual science meeting with so much opposition today, the fact that people who do not understand it arrived at, and give indications of, what is said by spiritual science? My dear friends, here something must be said that it is dangerous to put into words—or in any case not without danger.
161. Meditation and Concentration: Three Kinds of Clairvoyance: Lecture III 02 May 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Suppose the movement of atoms were there—the understanding cannot discover them in what is sense-perceptible. What would a man have to be in order to possess the right to speak of this world of atoms? 
Spiritual science must gradually build up for us the stages leading to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha—an understanding never again to be lost. This Mystery of Golgotha is the very meaning of the earth. To understand what this meaning of the earth is, must constitute the noblest endeavor of anyone finding his way step by step into spiritual science.
161. The Fourfold Nature of the “I” 09 Jan 1915, Dornach

For this human body has been transformed during the time of the sun, moon and earth. During the time of the sun it has undergone a transformation through the etheric body permeating it; during the time of the moon it has undergone a transformation through the astral body permeating it, and during the time of the earth it has undergone a transformation through the I permeating it.
Then it was transformed under the influence of the ether body, then under the influence of the astral body and finally under the influence of the ego.
Then, under the influence of the moon-time, we have what the astral body makes of it, and during the earth-time, what the I makes of it.
161. Perception of the Nature of Thought 10 Jan 1915, Dornach
Translated by Mabel Cotterell

How this invisible human destiny is determined comes under the rule of ancient Saturn laws. There we are already appealing to something entirely spiritual when, from the earthly laws of the embodiment of the Ego, we look towards the ancient Saturn laws.
But this too has withdrawn from the external activity of the world, this too is not directly under the active forces of Earth-existence. Where then must we seek for what has remained behind from the ancient Moon activity?
If the philosophers of today believe that they understand what Plato and Aristotle perceived as a universal symphony of thoughts, that is only due to a childish stage of the modern philosopher.
161. Brunetto Latini 30 Jan 1915, Dornach
Translated by George Adams

A famous thinker of our time writes a philosophic book. Surely then he must understand it. How should he not understand what he himself has written? ... And yet, it is literally true: he may have written the book and may yet understand nothing of what he has written.
Though she did not do so in the way of Olaf Asteson, still in a certain sense she underwent in sleep this time which is so favourable to Initiation. She underwent it in the last thirteen days of her embryonal life.
Thus, even in such facts as shine out far and wide in history, we see how necessary it is to pass through an understanding of the spiritual and thence to return to earthly affairs, for it is only then that we can fully understand the latter.
161. Life between Birth and Death as a Mirror of Life between Death and a New Birth 02 Feb 1915, Dornach
Translated by Christoph von Arnim

Everyone—I have said this before—is willing to admit that they cannot understand the workings of a watch if they have not learnt how the cogs and the rest of the mechanism functions.
Of course one might well say that one can understand human life between birth and death simply by observing it. Why is the other side, the life between death and a new birth, necessary?
Even the concepts which we have to learn concerning that life, concerning the truths between death and a new birth, these concepts have to be different to those which we have to learn from physical maya if we want to understand the latter. Some of the concepts which have to be acquired for an understanding of the other side of life as it passes between death and a new birth can be found in the Vienna lecture cycle of 1914, The Inner Nature of Man and Life between Death and Rebirth.
161. Meditation and Concentration 27 Mar 1915, Dornach
Translator Unknown

It must be emphasised again and again, that when it is given out, spiritual science, can indeed be understood. It cannot be emphasised often enough that one need not be a clairvoyant to understand spiritual science.
I especially mentioned there, that our thinking undergoes a transformation the moment we make ourselves free; especially when with reference to our thoughts we free ourselves from the physical instrument of the head.
The Gods are giving wisdom to man: Spiritual science has come. As human beings under the leadership of Ahriman has resisted it, it is now up to us not to resist any longer, but to have the courage to accept spiritual science, with full, true, earnestness.
161. Wilhelm Jordan as the Renewer of the Nibelungenlied 28 Mar 1915, Dornach

If we take this from the older saga, we understand the demonic peculiarity of Brunhilde, but we also understand that in the events of the Song of the Nibelungs, something great and more significant is taking place than what can otherwise take place between personalities as personalities in the world.
We must see in Nanna the human soul mourning Baldur, who was connected with her earlier as the power of solar vision, and who now dwells below in the dark realm of Hel, since in man only the gold of the sense mind has remained, which he can only seek with the mind power bound to the brain and the powers of the earth, that is, of sense matter. Only when we understand the whole atmosphere that permeates the Nibelungen saga in this way do we really understand the living forces at work in it. Then we also understand how something in the events can be seen as an extension of what lived in ancient times and what only survived in a faint echo in the people of that time.

Results 5121 through 5130 of 6548

˂ 1 ... 511 512 513 514 515 ... 655 ˃