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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 1811 through 1820 of 6552

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226. Man's Being, His Destiny and World-Evolution: Man's Being, His Destiny and World Evolution, Part III 21 May 1923, Oslo
Translated by Erna McArthur

The course of the year, however, was no longer really understood by him. Yet there was a time, during the sixth, fifth and fourth millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, when men lived in unison not only with day and night, but also with the year.
Yet, even at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, there were very few people who had been able to retain an understanding of this spirit and soul element contained in the earth during winter. Men of earlier ages, however, knew that in mid-summer—around the Day of St.
John that were celebrated especially in the North, the pupils of initiates under the guidance of these initiates, tried to accompany the earth-soul to the vast expanse of the stars, in order to read out of the stars what spiritual happenings and facts are connected with the earth.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: First Steps towards Imaginative Knowledge 19 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

Throughout the ages, understanding the world has been closely associated with understanding man himself. It is generally recognised that in the days when not only material existence, but also spiritual life, was taken into consideration, man was looked upon as a microcosm, as a world in miniature. This means that man in his being and doing, in the whole part he plays in the world, was viewed as a concentration of all the laws and activities of the Cosmos. In those days it was insisted that understanding of the universe could be founded only on an understanding of man. But here, for anyone who is unprejudiced, a difficulty arises at once.
If now we look round at the only part of the sense-world understood by people today, the mineral, lifeless world, this certainly is subject to the forces that signify death for the human being.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: Inspiration and Intuition 20 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

It is only when we have thus emptied our consciousness that we understand how matters really are in the spiritual world. For then we know that what we have seen up to now was not the spiritual world, but merely an Imaginative picture of it.
Such people are like that King of Spain to whom someone was showing a model of the universe and the course of the stars. The King had the greatest difficulty in understanding how all these movements occurred, and finally he exclaimed: “If God had left it to me, I would have made a much simpler world.”
Genuine Initiation-knowledge cannot merely satisfy men's desire for happiness; it has to guide them to a true understanding of their own being and destiny as they come forth from the world in the past, present and future.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: Initiation-Knowledge — New and Old 21 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

He is in the midst of what is incomprehensible for him. An understanding of what is experienced after death has to be striven for during life on Earth. You will learn from further descriptions that it was different for men of earlier ages.
This “one”—for this occasion one ought to dress in a certain way, and so on—all that under the aegis of this little word plays such a great part in the physical world, particularly in our present civilisation, has no place in the spiritual world.
In this way he comes to knowledge of the facts. Understanding for the ideas of the spiritual world has to be won by his coming to know in his own being all that was forgotten on entering earthly life.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: Dream Life 22 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

From the dramatic standpoint both deal with an undertaking that begins well, and then runs into great difficulties, ending in an insurmountable obstacle.
Even from the standpoint of Spiritual Science the great progress, the strict truthfulness and trustworthiness, of science to-day, must be given full recognition. That is an understood thing. Nevertheless, the following has to be said. When people to-day wish to know something, they turn to earthly objects and processes.
The Greeks would have said: The world is woven out of the chaos you experience when you leave the sense-world and are free of the body. Hence, to understand what the Greeks meant by “chaos” we must turn not to the material but to the super-sensible world.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: The Relation of Man to the Three Worlds 23 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

It is true that a lecture-course is generally easy to understand up to a certain stage, but when it comes to the point where man's relation to the world has to be grasped, people often say: “This is becoming very difficult—we can't keep up with it.”
How this happens is best seen in the metamorphosis undergone by the orderly thinking proper to the physical, naturalistic world when this passes into the imagery of dreams.
At first with your feeling, with the middle part of your being, you are entirely under the influence of sleep. Then the coverlet slips; part of your body gets chilled, and it enters your dream consciousness that some part of you is unclothed.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: The Ruling of Spirit in Nature 24 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

The wise men of the Druids, or others of that kind, sought out regions for their temples and sanctuaries where the conditions were such as to allow Imaginations to remain and not immediately to vanish away like clouds. Hence we can understand how it was that such centres for the holy places of the Druids were still sought for up to comparatively recent times.
But as a relic from the time when a man entered the spiritual world in a more instinctive, unconscious way, and even in his day-consciousness had more in him of the spiritual world, there still rises up into his evolution to-day a certain heritage from the past. And this is something we must imperatively understand through conscious spiritual cognition. For, if not rightly understood, it manifests itself in many deceptive ways, and in these matters such errors can become very dangerous.
But if the vision appears to him only in the physical world, without his realising that he has brought it back from the spiritual world, so that he fails to understand what it really is, then he is without guidance, and at the mercy of illusion where his visionary experience is concerned.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: The Interplay of various Worlds 25 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

The first conscious experience there is like the feeling we might have in the physical world if the ground were falling away under our feet, and we had to hold firm through our own inner forces. So you must imagine how, if we wish really to enter the spiritual world, we are bound to have this feeling of the ground being spirited away from under us, and how with no gravity to rely on, we have to maintain ourselves in free space by the strength within us.
He sees the spiritual activity that goes on in the kingdoms of nature, and he is, as it were, united with everything on Earth that is Sun-like. In order really to understand Jacob Boehme's writings, one must take their whole content as deriving from a complicated, wonderful second-sight.
He made no effort to become so; it arose instinctively. Nor did he undergo any training such as I have described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds; this sensitivity dawned within him like a delicate higher instinct.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: During Sleep and after Death 26 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

This formative forces body embraces also the living forces which enable a man to grow, underlie his nutritive processes and generally build him up. As we have seen, the formative forces body includes also the whole system of a man's thoughts.
Imaginative and Inspired consciousness bring to light here things which can be perfectly well understood by any impartial person with a healthy mind, but in our present civilisation they encounter tremendous prejudice.
Today, however, he will find the way only if he makes the journey under the leadership of that Being who united Himself with the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha; if, in other words, he enters into such a relation with the Mystery of Golgotha that Christ can become his guide.
227. The Evolution of Consciousness: Experiences between Death and Rebirth 27 Aug 1923, Penmaenmawr
Translated by Violet E. Watkin, Charles Davy

If anyone wishes to bring before his soul with a right understanding the experiences that are gone through consciously after the gate of death is passed, the following must be borne in mind.
It is only when some insight into the spiritual worlds takes us back to ancient times, when people knew about these worlds, that it becomes possible to understand all that has come down to us from the old wisdom. And then we are filled with wonder at this primeval wisdom of mankind.
People who want to shut out modern Spiritual Science have no means of understanding the language spoken by those who possessed the primeval wisdom of mankind; hence they are fundamentally unable to picture things historically.

Results 1811 through 1820 of 6552

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