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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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109. The Principle of Spiritual Economy: From Buddha to Christ 31 May 1909, Budapest
Translated by Peter Mollenhauer

Let us gain an understanding through listening and through looking back into the past. There have always been highly advanced personalities who stood out from the masses and to whom average people looked up in reverence as one would to high ideals.
Disregarding America for this purpose, let us say that Europe, Asia, and Africa have all been populated by the descendants of the ancient Atlanteans who had moved to these continents under Manu's leadership. This initiate of the Sun Oracle now had to take care that the founding of this post-Atlantean culture and the evolution of its human beings would proceed under the proper influence.
They were meant to become fond of the physical world and to see it not only as maya or illusion. Rather, they began to understand that this physical world is but the expression or physiognomy of the spiritual world that lies behind it.
The Principle of Spiritual Economy: Introduction
Translated by Peter Mollenhauer

The eleven lectures translated in this book were also given in 1909 and have been taken from the first half of a volume of lectures published in German under the title Das Prinzip der spirituellen Ökonomie im Zusammenhang mit Wiederverkörperungsfragen.
Whenever Steiner uses the word Ich, which I have rendered in these lectures with “ego,” it should be understood to mean the fourth body or principle with which the human being has been endowed—the other three being the physical, the etheric, and the astral bodies.
Anthroposophy is not a religion—it goes beyond that—but its totality is subsumed under Rudolf Steiner's Christology. The reader will encounter recurring questions in these lectures—sometimes in a fresh combination, sometimes in a slightly different context, always thought provoking.
109. Christianity in Human Evolution 15 Feb 1909, Berlin
Translated by Frances E. Dawson, Gilbert Church

Only through them will what spiritual science is intended to give gradually be attained; that is, the possibility of understanding and penetrating the world surrounding us in the physical, sense perceptible sphere. Now it is true that we have a long way to go before we shall be able to coordinate the spiritual lines and forces existing behind the world of the senses, but because of much that has been said in recent lectures, various phenomena of our existence will already have become clearer and more understandable.
This fact becomes explicable when we, as people of the present, study his life and are unable to understand his conscious ego, but are nevertheless compelled to hold the deepest possible reverence for the entire world of his feelings and for all that he did.
One phenomenon above all will become understandable when you know that during this time the most diverse personalities had sentient soul, intellectual soul or consciousness soul woven into them as copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth.
109. Christianity in the Evolution of Mankind 15 Feb 1909, Berlin
Translated by Frances E. Dawson

They only give; they take nothing from the earth. But if you wish to understand these things perfectly, you must distinguish between such a lofty Avatar-Being as the Christ and lower Avatar-beings.
Above all, one phenomenon will be understandable when you know that during this time the most diverse personalities had sentient soul, intellectual soul, or consciousness soul woven into them as copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. You will be able to understand that science, otherwise so little understood, which we ordinarily designate as scholasticism.
109. From Buddha to Christ II 14 Jun 1909, Vienna

Now the question could arise again: Is it enough for us ordinary people to just learn to understand these teachings? Do we not all have to become initiates in order to understand theosophy? Yes, all human beings at a certain stage of development should strive to become initiates by means of the given methods, which, however, can only lead to a successful development of the slumbering powers in the soul through moral strength. But even those who are not yet ready to develop these powers, who can only absorb and understand the lofty teachings of Theosophy through study and with the help of their teacher, also enjoy a great privilege.
The words spoken by Christ: “He who eats my bread has trampled me under his feet,” are to be taken literally, for Christ is the spirit of our Earth, the Earth is his physical body.
109. Dedication of an Anthroposophical Group 15 Jun 1909, Wrocław
Translator Unknown

To-day, however, he only sees them as physical objects, and it is difficult for any one living in our day to picture to himself the divine and the spiritual. Humanity has really lost its understanding of this divine-spiritual vision. In spite of this fact it is true that even to-day there are many souls which are wonderfully stirred by their understanding of that which is divine and spiritual.
But what is it that can shine forth within man, that will indeed shine forth within him, if he understands and pursues his development aright, which is the task of spiritual science? To explain this we shall have to go far back in history.
And this means that a fruit will be carried over into the other life. If man now understands that birth and life are not suffering, but afford the possibility of emerging from it, inasmuch as life gives him the opportunity to develop the Spiritual which leads out beyond all suffering—if man understands this, old age is no longer suffering, but a drawing nearer to the fruit of life.
110. The Spiritual Hierarchies (1928): Lecture I 12 Apr 1909, Düsseldorf
Translated by Harry Collison

Much that is to be found in the stanzas of Dzyan will only be gradually understood in all its depth. It may well be said here that the wisdom of the stanzas of Dzyan is of such a kind that it cannot yet be understood in the widest anthroposophical circles, or fathomed with the exoteric capabilities of the present day.
But, all through those very long epochs, large masses of humanity could not penetrate to the sources of that wisdom, could only understand it with great difficulty; it was precisely the understanding of it which came with such difficulty.
In the sacred Mysteries these words — which later became the mere names of physical planets — were always understood as descriptions of spiritual worlds and gradations of spiritual realms. The outer world always understood it materially up to the time of modern Mythology — I use the word purposely — which is called Astronomy.
110. The Spiritual Hierarchies (1928): Lecture II 12 Apr 1909, Düsseldorf
Translated by Harry Collison

In all explanations of what exists and happens upon the earth, the central point of importance was always given to the spiritual investigation of fire. If we want to understand what we may call the Eastern teaching about fire, which was of such far-reaching importance in those ancient times for the acquisition of the knowledge and understanding of all life, then we must look around us at the other phenomena and occurrences of nature and see how these were considered by that very ancient teaching, which can still be useful nowadays for the purposes of spiritual science.
What did the teacher of ancient wisdom say to those who had to understand this? He said: ‘If thou lookest upon the outer world in such a way that thy spiritual process does not stop at the smoke, but rises to the element of fire, then after thy death thou dost free the spirit which is bewitched in the smoke.’
But the man who is not pious in this sense, who denies or does not understand the spirit and is always muddling through a materialistic chaos, into him these elementals of the fourth class flow, but remain unchanged.
110. The Spiritual Hierarchies (1928): Lecture III 13 Apr 1909, Düsseldorf
Translated by Harry Collison

As I have said before; some of these questions will be answered in these lectures; but if the understanding of them has to depend only upon such qualifications for thinking as the Earth gives to man, these questions cannot really be grasped at all.
Whilst they are incarnating that which we call external warmth is produced. If you had undertaken your voyage during the later stages of Saturn you could have differentiated outer impressions of warmth and also of cold.
[ 8 ] You must understand that the ancient Holy Rishis gave this idea to their pupils; they transported themselves in spirit back to the times of ancient Saturn, and made their pupils realise how a whole planet was able to produce something that resembled an expansion and contraction in breathing.
110. The Spiritual Hierarchies (1928): Lecture IV 13 Apr 1909, Düsseldorf
Translated by Harry Collison

[ 1 ] When considering the conditions of Saturn which are still transparent and less immersed in Maya, we glance back a little at what was said this morning, we shall be able to understand in what way the liberation or imprisonment of certain beings can be brought about — the liberation of those beings of which we spoke yesterday in relation to that most significant and incisive passage of the divine Gita.
We know how a man develops these further, that the ‘I’ works from within outwards, that in the first place the astral body is changed in such a way as to bring it completely under the dominion of the ‘I.’ Now when the astral body is so far transmuted that the ‘I’ has complete power over it, we say: this astral body has become of such a nature that it can contain the Spirit-self or Manas.

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