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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 1661 through 1670 of 6552

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236. Karmic Relationships II: The Study of Problems Connected with Karma 22 Jun 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Mabel Cotterell, Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond

I think that the meaning of what I have said will be understood. I have spoken as I have in order that the necessary earnestness may prevail in regard to lectures of the kind now being given.
Again, it is one of the most difficult of all investigations that can be undertaken in spiritual science to make an accurate survey of what happens between falling asleep and waking.
As sleep continues, however, a man begins to dive down into the experiences undergone in his preceding earthly life (see arrows in diagram), then into those of the life before that, and so on, backwards.
236. Karmic Relationships II: Groups of Human Souls United by their Karma 27 Jun 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Mabel Cotterell, Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond

Speaking now with the help of Initiation-Science, we shall admit that this is a deep and searching question. For you can understand from what I have told you in the course of recent lectures, that the phenomena of nature too are connected with the karma of mankind.
For this interworking must be known if we are to understand the shaping and forming of karma. In the life between death and a new birth, karma is prepared.
Now in all the ancient Mysteries a certain teaching was given which, if fully understood, produced a profoundly moving impression in those who become pupils in the Mysteries and gradually mastered the Science of Initiation.
236. Karmic Relationships II: Karma Viewed from the Standpoint of World History 29 Jun 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Mabel Cotterell, Charles Davy, Dorothy S. Osmond

It may truly be said that reality is denied and rejected by a large portion of humanity to-day. The essential nature of matter is not understood by materialistic thinkers. Matter can be understood only when the creative spirit within it is apprehended.
And so we must be mindful of what is brought into existence when certain social orders are created under the influence of materialistic, fantastic ideas—ideas which have sprung entirely from human aberrations, have nothing to do with reality and could never have originated elsewhere than in man himself.
The beings inhabitating the Old Moon were subject to quite different natural laws, laws under which this Moon-life was involved in constant movement; it was inwardly mobile, in ceaseless, surging flow.
237. Karmic Relationships III: Introduction to these Studies on Karma 01 Jul 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Dorothy S. Osmond

In these pictures we see the Dominicans portrayed, treading the representatives of Arabism under foot. The Arabians are there under their feet—they are being trodden underfoot. The two streams were felt in this keen contrast for a long time after.
Until at length those philosophers arose who stood under an influence which has really killed all meaning. To speak radically, we will say: those who stood under the influence of Descartes!
I do not say that they became philosophers. These things underwent many a change. When men begin to think along these lines the strangest nonsense becomes self-understood.
237. Karmic Relationships III: Forces of Karmic Preparation in the Cosmos 04 Jul 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Dorothy S. Osmond

But this is a spiritual instinct—an instinct that works within the Ego. It is just by understanding this, that we shall come to understand the absolute consistency of this instinctive working with human freedom.
With the clear consciousness that it is his concern, he undergoes all that took place in the depths of other human beings' souls, with whom he entered into any kind of karmic relationship,—to whom he did anything whatever good or ill.
It shows, my dear friends, how powerfully the impulses of the past work upon the men of the present time,—how contented they feel under these influences. It is due to the fact that the 19th century is working still so strongly into the 20th.
237. Karmic Relationships III: The Spiritual Foundations of Anthroposophical Endeavour 06 Jul 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Dorothy S. Osmond

by way of dire and painful inner conflicts, which were indeed more painful than is generally thought. For the souls to whom I now refer had undergone very much during that time; and all that they had thus undergone, they wove it into the mighty cosmic Imaginations which were woven together by a large number of souls in common, during the first half of the 19th century.
We see him unfolding this activity in an almost out-of-the-way place, though visited by many inquisitive persons. At length, under the influence of the practices in which he engages without understanding, he gets a strange physical debility,—a disease attacking especially the larynx,—and (this being a masculine incarnation) his voice becomes hoarser and hoarser till it has almost vanished.
Such things must also be discovered in the connections of human life if we would understand a present life from its preceding conditions. When we consider such things as these, a certain measure of understanding is indeed poured out over all that takes place through human beings in the world.
237. Karmic Relationships III: The Soul's Condition of Those Who Seek for Anthroposophy 08 Jul 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Dorothy S. Osmond

In the first centuries of Christianity they still understood the Gospels, certain passages of which speak so distinctly of this Mystery. They understood that the Being who is called Christ had come down into a human body from the Sun.
At the same time, in the epoch of which I am now speaking, the possibility of really understanding such a conception had dwindled very much. It was hard to understand that a Being coming from the Sun descends on to the Earth.
Under these conditions, they accepted what is related in the Gospels. They could no longer turn their gaze upward to the cosmic worlds in order to understand the Being of the Christ.
237. Karmic Relationships III: Spiritual Conditions of Evolution Leading up to the Anthroposophical Movement 11 Jul 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Dorothy S. Osmond

It remained their fundamental underlying feeling: “Christ lives indeed for the earth, since for the earth He died; but the earth cannot receive Him.
Now the human beings of whom we have been speaking (who in their souls underwent the conditions I described, who looked down on to the earth and perceived this strange Catechism-teaching, which would have been so impossible for them)—they, in their religious worship too, had more or less preserved the old Christian custom of not allowing a man to take part in the whole Mass till he had undergone a longer preparation.
Only in the symbol was it preserved; and in the symbol it has remained until this day. Yet even in the symbol it was not understood, nor is it understood today. This was the second feeling that sprang forth in their souls, intensifying their sense of the need for a new Christ-experience that was to come.
237. Karmic Relationships III: The School of Chartres 13 Jul 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Dorothy S. Osmond

For only when we are aware of these conditions, shall we be able to understand certain extra-karmic events which flowed into the streams of life that are welded together in the Anthroposophical Movement.
In the poem ‘Bataille des Sept Arts,’ deeply penetrating as it is for anyone who understands it, we feel the living spiritual breath of the seven Liberal Arts. All these things were working in the 12th century.
All this became a mighty revelation under the influence of the slight sun-stroke which came over him. Then he saw what man could see under the influence of the living principle of knowledge: He saw a mountain mightily arising with all that lived and sprang forth from it, minerals, plants, and animals, and there appeared to him the Goddess Natura, there appeared the Elements, there appeared the Planets, there appeared the Goddesses of the seven Liberal Arts, and at length Ovid as his guide and teacher.
237. Karmic Relationships III: The New Age of Michael 28 Jul 1924, Dornach
Translated by George Adams, Dorothy S. Osmond

It was a great cosmopolitan movement, seeking to give to the whole of the then civilised world the spiritual forces that had gathered on the soil of ancient Greece. Such are the things that happen under the impulse of Michael, and that happened then too under his impulse. Now those who took part in these earthly deeds, done in the service of Michael, were no longer upon the earth during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.
But there was another thing connected with it, which we can only rightly understand if we take the following into account. To think—to live in thoughts that spring forth from within—as we do today, was impossible for the men of ancient times.
We need only look into these Scholastic works and see how they wrestled to understand what is the real and deep significance of Concepts—of the content of Intelligence—for mankind and for the things of the world.

Results 1661 through 1670 of 6552

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