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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 1391 through 1400 of 6065

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84. What is the Purpose of Anthroposophy and the Goetheanum?: The Soul Life of Man and its Development Towards Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition 15 Apr 1923, Dornach

Rudolf Steiner
We draw water from the entire water supply of the earth. Of course, we are not under the illusion that our tongue produces the water. Only when we think do we do that. There we speak of the brain producing thought, while we merely draw from the total thought that is universally spread out in the world, which we then have within us as a sum of thoughts.
But you see, everywhere one can point to the concrete processes that underlie what the outside world finds so fantastic when anthroposophy speaks of man not consisting of the physical body alone, but of the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego.
They stand side by side in such a way that even today theology would like the sensory world to be understood only sensually, and for the moral world there would be a completely different kind of knowledge.
84. What is the Purpose of Anthroposophy and the Goetheanum?: Soul Immortality in the Light of Anthroposophy 27 Apr 1923, Prague

Rudolf Steiner
To speak from the point of view of Anthroposophy today still means, quite understandably, to have great opposition, for Anthroposophy wants to speak about things of life and reality in a way that seems to many in our time to be something quite outlandish.
But even during waking we are quite aware that in this extraordinarily interesting 'dream world we are dealing at most with a relative reality, which we can only understand if we understand it from the point of view of waking life. After all, one can at first imagine hypothetically that man dreams throughout his whole life, that he has never experienced anything in his consciousness other than the colorful, manifold dream images.
Anthroposophy now makes such an attempt to develop that which underlies the ability to remember, in order to arrive at this second awakening through the inner practice of life.
84. What is the Purpose of Anthroposophy and the Goetheanum?: The Development and Education of the Human Being in the Light of Anthroposophy 30 Apr 1923, Prague

Rudolf Steiner
Such discussions could be made, but what is meant from the point of view under discussion here will be best understood if I stick to the popular. What lives in our memory, what makes our personality complete, so that we are able at any moment to conjure up before our eyes what we have been through, is indeed brought into the human soul through impressions from the outside world.
If it is a memory that can be compared to a habitual movement, then one can say that for memory one image follows another. In short, what we call memory undergoes a metamorphosis when children change teeth around the age of seven. It undergoes a metamorphosis from more physical-bodily experience to spiritual-soul experience.
It could now be objected that only those who have undergone what qualifies them to look into the spiritual world can have an interest in such knowledge of man.
84. What is the Purpose of Anthroposophy and the Goetheanum?: How to Know Things About the Supernatural World 26 May 1924, Paris

Rudolf Steiner
The mysteries were strictly segregated sites, strictly governed by priestly sages who could arrange the external performance in such a way that a person really did develop the habit of keeping their soul independent of the body and, with this independent soul, of entering the spiritual world, by undergoing the process over a period of years. Modern man would have no trust in people who have to seek the way into the spiritual world in this way.
87. Ancient Mysteries and Christianity: On Heraclitus 19 Oct 1901, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner
We now have two books which are still [a beginning], but which already show a deeper understanding. That is the German book by Lassalle and then the book by [Bywater]. Both must be consulted if one wants to understand Heraclitus. But Pfleiderer wrote what forms the basis of Heraclitus' understanding. He was able to write this because he still came from the Hegelian school and therefore still had an understanding of it.
Now we will also understand what it means when Heraclitus speaks of fire and why he rebukes the Greek poets because they understand and describe the world in a completely external way.
87. Ancient Mysteries and Christianity: Greek Mythology 26 Oct 1901, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner
They fought this view of the Greeks because they saw that this absorption in beauty, this search for playful activity, rested on a deeper foundation. This is how Nietzsche came to understand Greek tragedy, the Greek work of art, not as it had been understood until Rohde, but in a completely different way.
But since he is born, it is best to die. - It is to the credit of Rohde and Nietzsche that they have correctly understood this saying and understood Greekism in this way. It is not pessimism. Nietzsche called his first work "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" because music is only a symbol for beauty, for the conception of the world as a work of art.
And in the whole of Greek mythology, this drawing from one consciousness to another was represented under the image of the goddess, under the image of the woman. Goethe expresses this drawing towards with these words.
87. Ancient Mysteries and Christianity: Heraclitus And Pythagoras 02 Nov 1901, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner
He regarded the rising and falling, the coming and going, which Heraclitus imagined under the image of fire, as the eternal flow of things. The human ego, the human soul, is woven into the cosmic world process.
The myst should be brought to the point of learning to understand this most terrible event not as that terrible event, but as a symbol of the deepest realization.
We would never be able to say that they are one and the same. We would not understand this. The one who cannot perceive soulfully will say: They have nothing to do with each other.
87. Ancient Mysteries and Christianity: The Pythagorean Doctrine 09 Nov 1901, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner
Take his "Apprentices at Sais". This is something that can only be understood in its esoteric meaning. But anyone who knows the personality of Novalis - he was born in 1772 and died in 1801, so he was 29 years old - will understand this.
I just wanted to say that this world view of the Pythagoreans can only be understood if one understands the immersion of Novalis, which must be understood mathematically - of Novalis, who was of a thoroughly poetic nature and as such was what literary history calls a "Romantic", yet was rooted in such laws that he could see strict mathematics as the primal source of existence.
But if we understand this for the whole sum of world phenomena, if we understand that the spiritual can be detached from the material, then this leads us up to higher levels.
87. Ancient Mysteries and Christianity: The Pythagorean 16 Nov 1901, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner
But this only lives in the minds if they cannot become aware of the inner rapture, if they cannot understand, if they cannot grasp how for the Pythagoreans the whole counting becomes different when we have arrived at the ten. If you don't understand this purely in the way the Pythagoreans understood it, you won't understand what the Pythagoreans meant.
According to the Pythagoreans, it is precisely in counting that we have a means of raising ourselves more and more into the spiritual realm. You have to consider what he understands by the so-called "gnomons". He understands this to mean nothing other than the inner lawfulness that prevails in our world of numbers if we study this world of numbers in the right way.
87. Ancient Mysteries and Christianity: The Relationship of the Mental and Spiritual to the Physical World 23 Nov 1901, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner
If you think you can only look at them superficially, you will find that you cannot understand them. They can only be understood if they are interpreted in a deeper way. We will look at this in more detail when we consider the Platonic world of ideas.
It always indicates that we have something to look for underneath. The legend of Theseus is a symbol of the fact that, once Theseus was freed from certain passions, from certain connections with materiality, i.e. once he had undergone a certain development, he no longer needed to make the sacrifices that others had to make to sensuality.
The fact that Socrates overcame death in accordance with the facts is intended as a symbol of what and how the Pythagorean must overcome in the sequence of stages of his teaching. Thus we also see that the Pythagorean understands the soul as something that transcends the individual and that he thereby leads his students to a spiritual understanding of the world.

Results 1391 through 1400 of 6065

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